


A Thousand Stars I Wear

by Lapin



Series: The Fall [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, F/M, M/M, Names on wrists, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-26 17:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 78,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1696859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapin/pseuds/Lapin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why does a name on your wrist guarantee love? Or even knowing the person?</p><p>Ori does not think of <em>Fíli, son of Vimli</em>, most of the time.  But his name is in stark black on Ori's left wrist, has been since he was twenty. Eventually, that will mean something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ManhattanMom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ManhattanMom/gifts).



> Ahahahah
> 
> I hate you Tumblr. STOP ENCOURAGING ME DAMN IT.
> 
> Title from [The Fall](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvFOThAymS0) by The Black Lillies. I suggest a listen. 
> 
> For [ManhattanMom](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ManhattanMom/pseuds/ManhattanMom) who puts up with me way more than she should.

Ori's mark appears one morning when he's twenty. He's playing with scraps of yarn from his mother's knitting, practising knots and patterns, when his left wrist starts to hurt. At first he ignores it, but the pain increases until he's crying and his mother has set aside her work to bring him into her lap and comfort him while the name writes itself out.

“There, there, my sweet,” she soothed, rocking him. “It's almost over. You've gotten lucky, really, it's a short one. Oh, I think...yes, there we are, see, all finished.” Her tone is overly bright, attempting to distract him from the lingering sting, as she shows him the new mark on his pale wrist. “Can you read it?”

“Feli, son of Vimli,” he replies, and she laughs.

“No, no, my love, that's an _í_ , not an _e_. Fíli, son of Vimli. Now, isn't that a good name? Sounds cheerful. And you've gotten yours very early! Believe me, that'll be a relief when you're older.” She rocks him a bit longer, Ori sniffing against her chest still, until the sting fades altogether. 

After an hour or so, he forgets about it entirely, more interested in the wooden horse he'd gotten for his birthday. He sits quietly, making up fields and other wild places for his horse to run in, imagining his horse can even gallop across the water, like magic. He doesn't notice his brothers and sisters getting home until Nori is sitting cross-legged beside him, leaning over with his elbows on his knees so he and Ori are a closer height. 

“Hello, Nori,” he says, still looking at his horse. “Is supper ready?”

“Not quite yet,” Nori replies, reaching for Ori's hand. He pauses, waiting for Ori to tell him it was all right before he actually touched him. He turns Ori's hand over, and reads the name aloud. “Well, that's a good-sounding name. Don't know a Vimli though, or any with that ending. Guess you'll have a bit of a wait.” 

Ori shrugs, the whole thing too far above him to really interest him, at least not as much as it seems to interest adults. All his brothers and sisters have names as well. Dori and Adjoa have one another's, of course, because they're married. The names have something to do with being married, Ori knows, and being married has something to do with kissing and babies. 

“You want to see mine?” Nori offers, whispering it like a secret, and Ori looks up at last. Nori wears an old silver cuff around his left wrist, a _sanbay_. Ori knows it's there, but he's never really been allowed to read it. He nods, and his big brother slips a chain from around his neck, one with a thin key on the end. He slides the key up into the lock that keeps the cuff closed, and opens it up. Nori's skin is a bit paler under the _sanbay_ , but his mark is as dark and clear as Ori's. Different thought.

“The writing isn't like mine,” he protests. His name's letters are crisp, with just a touch of flourish on the ends, thick, but not very much. Nori's letters are very thick, and there is no flourish at all. “Dwalin,” he reads. “Son of Fundin. Why aren't yours like mine?”

“Because Fíli, whoever he is, probably isn't like Dwalin,” Nori says softly, closing his _sanbay_ again and putting the key back around his neck. “Dwalin is big and strong, loud and stubborn. Unflinching. Uncompromising. He's a soldier.” 

“How come you're not married?” Ori is confused. If Nori knows Dwalin, why aren't they like Dori and Adjoa, or Mori and Samin. Mori and Samin aren't married yet, not until the spring, but they are getting married. “Are you going to get married after Mori and Samin?” Mori would be angry if Nori took any attention from her, and she'd probably pull his hair again. 

Nori ruffles Ori's braids. “No, _nadadith_ , I'll not be getting married to Dwalin.”

Ori frowns. “How come?” 

“Dwalin and I have never met properly. Nor will we. For the best, really.” 

He doesn't understand, but then it's time for supper, and everyone makes a fuss over Ori, wanting to admire his mark. It upsets him, and he ends up hiding in Dori's lap until they stop, his _nadad_ ordering them to occupy themselves with something else, rapping his knuckles on the wooden kitchen table to make his point. They do, because everyone listens to Dori. 

Mori wants to talk about the wedding, but no one else does, and supper ends with a great big row. Dori mutters in Khuzdul as he puts Ori to bed. Ori doesn't always understand it, especially not Dori's and their mother's. They say a lot of words differently than other people here in Ered Luin do, and no one else really speaks it as much as they do any way. Still, Ori likes to listen, likes the way the words sound, even if he doesn't know them. 

Ori sleeps in the attic now instead of with his mother, the little space big enough for him and no one else, which he usually prefers. If he gets scared, there's always a sibling he can go find and get into bed with. 

After Dori has tucked him in and made sure the window is locked, the curtains closed and secured, Ori asks, “How come Nori isn't married?” 

He's said something wrong. He knows it from Dori's face, and he wishes he hadn't asked. “That's a long story, _nadadith_. You'll have to ask Nori when you're older.” But the way he says it tells Ori he shouldn't ever actually ask.

He's only twenty, so he forgets the whole matter in good time, and even forgets the name on his wrist for the most part. It's just there, in the same way his eyes are brown and he's small for his age. Over the years, as he learns to read and learns his letters and starts to draw, crafting becomes more important than anything else. He decides he wants to be a scribe after he fails to follow any of his siblings in their crafts, so his mother finds a master, an older woman who teaches from her home. She teaches Ori how to read in Common and Khuzdul, and even what Elvish she knows, has him practise his letters over and over until his fingers ache and his clothes are covered in chalk dust. 

The books are mostly ledgers, so she teaches him his sums as well, and after sums, the higher maths that make his siblings shake their heads. There's no help to be had at home from them, so Ori has to listen carefully during lessons, ignoring the other children, and going straight home after to practise. 

There's no paper to be had, so he practises in the dirt with a stick, or chalk. He finds places outside the settlement where he's not in the way, and spends hours drawing on the rock faces with chalk he finds, or Nori brings home for him, or burnt sticks. Eventually, he graduates to making paint after he finds an old book describing how in his teacher's little collection. It takes dozens of tries to get it right, but once he does, he has more colours than he knows what to do with, and his painting on the stones start to look like what he sees in his head.

When he's fifty-seven, his teacher tells him he's outpaced the other students and starts letting him read the real books. Within their covers, they have whole worlds, Ori is delighted to find, and the words stay with him long after he's gone home for the night. Just the thought of being allowed to read them over and over is thrilling, but Mori tells him there's no way they can ever afford a proper book for him. There's too many bodies to clothe, too many bellies to fill, and after Samin gets injured in the mines, she can no longer work. 

Ori's lessons are cut to twice a week, and he's required to help more with the household chores. His mother's eyes are getting bad, so now he has to sit and take dictation for the bills and the grocery lists and whatever other correspondence she has. 

His family is sorry for the lessons, but there's nothing to be done, and Ori resigns himself to likely never being a proper scribe. They'll never be able to afford a real master, unless Ori is taken in on scholarship, and that's just as unlikely. Their family has no wealthy or influential friends. He might be able to be a teacher, he supposes, and decides it will just have to do. Maybe he'll get very lucky 

It doesn't seem as thought their family is very lucky at all in general though, so he doesn't waste his time. He keeps making his paints, and his little drawings in the sand, his big ones outside. No one ever comes up into his little attic room, so he starts to decorate that too. He creates designs and patterns on his walls, until what was just plain whitewash is now the geometric designs people with money have.

Dori and Adjoa put him to work in the restaurant too, clearing tables and cleaning dishes. He's not so good at the cooking bit, but he can clean just fine, so he makes himself useful, even though a part of him resents it. Some his age have jobs with real wages now, and Ori envies them the pocket money, something he's never had in his whole life. 

Idly now, he has started to wonder about Fíli, son of Vimli. Sometimes at night, he traces the letters with the pad of his index finger, or sweeps his thumb over it, as though it could be wiped away. He's never met a single person with their sort of name, and he's started to worry it means Fíli is one of their scattered peoples. 

His heart hurts when he thinks about that. Fíli, whoever he is, could die before Ori ever knows him. He kisses the butcher's boy a few times behind the shop, enjoys the act, enjoys the way Amiran shoves Ori against the wall, fits himself between Ori's thighs. He's a little older, but so much bigger and tall, and Ori likes that, he finds. He likes Amiran's aggression, how he wants without excuses. It's obviously not his name on Ori's wrist, and it's not Ori on his, but Amiran says there's nothing wrong with practise, nothing wrong with having a little fun with a friend. 

One afternoon, Amiran pushes between Ori's thighs, and thrusts against Ori hard and fast until he shudders. He reaches down into Ori's trousers, and finishes Ori off next, Ori's fingers digging into Amiran's strong shoulders. It's not just a little fun, it's a lot, and they have that sort quite a few times after that, until the person bearing Amiran's name walks into the butcher's. 

Ori stops going after that, begs Sori to go instead. His sister frowns, her shining black hair hanging loose over the washbasin, her dark eyes narrowed. 

“Oh, for mercy's sake, not _him _,” she drawls.__

__“Shove off,” he grumbles, his arms crossed across his chest._ _

__“The butcher's boy,” she pushes, raising her eyebrows until Ori comes over and begins to braid her hair. “Your mark certainly doesn't say _Muscled Idiot_.”_ _

__“Your face says _Muscled Idiot_ ,” Ori mutters, separating her hair into two sections, so he can put them in matching braids. Her hair is like her sire's, far too fine when wet for anything too elaborate. “It was just a bit of fun. Nothing wrong with that.”_ _

__“You're sixty,” Sori says, because he is by the time this conversation happens. “You need to be serious about your mark now. What if you meet them, and you're unworthy?” There's an empty bottle of wine on the dressing table. Ori sees it, and resigns himself to things he doesn't want to hear. “You'll end up some sad drunk.”_ _

__Ori is braiding the first braid in a fishtail. “Did you ever meet Seung?” His sister's mark reads _Seung, son of Eun_. _ _

__“Died in Azanulbizar. I looked him up, years ago. Found the records. Died young. Child soldier.” She's never spoken of this, not to Ori at least. “My name was in the records, you know. _Mark reads, Sori, daughter of Glori_. I hated reading it, knowing I was always going to be without him. I never even heard his voice, or saw his face.”_ _

__She's so sad, so Ori hugs her from behind, and she grabs his wrists, kisses them._ _

__“You wait? You hear me? You wait for Fíli, son of Vimli.”_ _

__She's so sad._ _

__“All right,” he agrees, and Sori goes to the butcher every week after._ _

__He's sixty-two when his whole family, excluding him, is struck by the fever sweeping through the settlement, and Nori is missing. A messenger wearing a scarf over their face comes to the door, with a sealed letter that Ori gives to Dori. His mother is too ill to read anything at all, and Dori is starting to recover. When he reads the missive, he groans, showing Adjoa and muttering with her in Khuzdul for a long time._ _

__“We cannot leave him in there,” Adjoa insists in Common._ _

__“I can hardly stand,” Dori reminds her. “And everyone else is just as bad, if not worse. I cannot make the trip to get him. He will have to endure for a few days more.”_ _

__Ori is listening, unsure of what they mean. Maybe Nori is ill somewhere else. “I could get Nori,” he offers._ _

__Dori means to say no, but Adjoa gets there first. “He's old enough,” she says to Dori, and Ori still doesn't understand. They quarrel some more, and Mori puts in her thoughts, agreeing with Adjoa. Sori, his other sister, is leery of it, but when Dori finally tries to stand to go do whatever it is that needs to be done with Nori, he hardly makes it to the doorway._ _

__The fever is bad. Many of their neighbours are ill too, and there's been death. Babies and children, mostly, older people too. Dori needs to rest, or he might get worse, so Ori finally insists, “I can do it. I'm old enough.”_ _

__“We cannot leave him in there,” Sori says, a point they've all made multiple times._ _

__They've won the argument. Adjoa has Ori go into the kitchen and find the case hidden under the sink. Inside, there's money, more than Ori's ever seen. Mori and Sori debate how much they should put in the leather purse, finally agreeing when Samin names a higher amount. Sori ties it securely inside Ori's shirt and tells him not to touch it or give any indication it's there at all._ _

__Then they finally tell him where he's going; the Tower._ _

__“You must never use Nori's name in that place, Ori,” they all tell him, over and over. “You're to call him Lori, do you understand?” Lori was their other sister, the one who died before Ori got his mark. She'd gone away, travelling, or something, and one day, Adjoa says a Dwarf they didn't know came to the door with her beads in hand and an apology. An accident on the river._ _

__Why would anyone call Nori by that name? They're not telling him something, something big, and it frustrates Ori. He's the youngest by a lot, the quietest by more than a bit, and the smallest still, and they all treat him as though he's still just twenty, needing to be tucked in at night and hide behind them when strangers speak to him._ _

__“Just do it,” Mori says, when he tries to demand an explanation. “If Nori tells you, he tells you. But you mind your own business until then.” She's not being mean, surprisingly, but she's confusing him even more. “You call him by that name there. Lori, son of Eindride, remember?” Eindride was Lori's father, not Nori's._ _

__But he nods any way._ _

__The Tower is far away, far enough Ori has to ride the trolley, putting coins in the box as he bites his lip. It is a part of the very mountain, a natural peak reshaped to be distinctive from every other building in the whole of the settlement, the outside harsh and plain, so tall Ori has to tip his head back. Riding the trolley for so long makes his back ache, the wooden bench digging into his thighs by the time he can get off. The ponies intimidate him, the way they roll their heads and snort at him as he and the rest disembark. Ori loves dogs and cats and birds, but ponies are big, big like bears and deer, and wild._ _

__Ori is the only walking to the Tower, and every step makes his heart beat faster. The great doors are open to admit the cool breeze, and inside, there's a desk with three Dwarves in uniforms sitting, scribbling on papers, stamping them occasionally._ _

__He's noticed by one with thick, coarse Blacklock braids, her dark eyes narrowed as she looks at him. “Yes?” she asks._ _

__“I'm here for Lori,” Ori manages, frightened. She carries an axe, and that means she's a noble of some kind. Nobles are dangerous. “Lori, son of Eindride.”_ _

__She snorts, and stands, scaring Ori even more. She's so tall, he only comes to her chin. “Just how many siblings does that thief have?” she asks, more herself than Ori, who is caught on the word _thief_. Nori stole something? That was why he was here? And they already all knew him. Just how many times had Nori been in this place, waiting for one of them to come get him? _ _

__“And not a one of you look alike,” another guard adds, peering at Ori sceptically. “Got those two with Southern looks, got that one of Eastern stock, and the one with silver hair, and now you.” She means Adjoa and Mori, both of whom are dark-skinned, and Sori, who has the same shiny black hair her sire did. Then Dori, with his shockingly silver hair, Nori with his auburn hair and slight build. Now here he is, and he really doesn't look like any of his siblings._ _

__Lori had been blonde, with dark black skin and eyes, Dori says._ _

__“I'm supposed to bring him home,” he says to the floor, and the guard makes a disgusted sound._ _

__“You lot just don't learn, do you?”_ _

__She leaves, going down a hall and clearly expecting Ori to follow her. The Tower is stark inside, completely bare of decoration. Ori's never seen anything like it. He stays as close to the guard as he dares, until they're standing in a long corridor of barred doors._ _

__A few cells down, Nori is sitting on the bed, playing with one of the beads from his hair. When he sees Ori, he pales. “How could they send you to this place?” he asks, as the guard unlocks the door, opening it for Nori._ _

__“Why not? I'm sure he'll be getting better acquainted with it sooner or later,” the guard drawls, and to Ori's surprise, Nori doesn't rise to the bait, his mouth firmly shut. “All right, let's get the fine paid. We'll keep the bed made up for you.” Still, Nori says nothing, so neither does Ori, staying close to his brother._ _

__“Everyone but me has the fever,” Ori says, once they're out of the hall. “Even Amad.”_ _

__“Why aren't you ill?” Nori is worrying at his bottom lip, and when Ori takes his arm, he feels how his brother is trembling._ _

__“Don't know. I got sick for a few days, but then I was better.” He wants to ask, but he shouldn't, not here, not in this awful, cold place. Ori doesn't want to be here for one more minute, and Nori shouldn't either. He's warm, very warm. Nori is ill, Ori realizes, a pang of fear in his heart._ _

__Ori pays at the front desk, pays an awful amount of coins that make him sick to think about, and papers are stamped. They make Ori sign his name on the line, his sleeve pulling up just enough his mark shows, and he worries for a second. But when he checks, Nori's cuff is still securely in place. They didn't take it from him. Small blessings are still blessings, despite how wan Nori is._ _

__Suddenly, his brother stiffens beside him, and when Ori looks up, he sees a tall Dwarf with broad shoulders and thick muscles, two axes strapped to his back, and a war hammer at his waist. Axes and a hammer. He must be very important, and at first, that's why Ori thinks Nori is afraid. But then the guard signing them out respectfully addresses him as, “Captain Dwalin, sir,” and Ori's eyes widen. This is the Dwalin on Nori's wrist, and when he looks back at his brother, he sees something horrible in Nori. His brother's shoulders are slumped, eyes on the ground, defeated and ashamed. He's never seen Nori this way._ _

__“Which one are you then?” Dwalin asks Ori, his voice deep and gruff, but not unkind. “Kori? Bori?”_ _

__“Just Ori,” Ori says, his eyes going to Dwalin's hands and wrists. He wears knuckle dusters, but Ori can see the mark, clear as day: Nori, son of Spyros. His brother's name is written in a much finer script than how Dwalin's name is written, with flourish and delicacy, but not overly so. Yes, this is that Dwalin, and his brother isn't saying a word to him._ _

__“Just plain Ori?” Dwalin is frowning at Nori, but there's little ill will to it. No personal grudge, no personal thoughts at all. “Set a better example for your brother, Lori. Little ones shouldn't be coming to this place to get you.” He signs off on something the guard points at. “Go on home to your mother, now. I better not see you for awhile.”_ _

__“Until next time, Captain Dwalin,” Nori replies, as Dwalin walks away._ _

__They take the trolley back, silent. Ori has a hundred questions, some about Dwalin, some about why Nori was in that place, why they knew him. He doesn't say a word though, because he doesn't know how to turn any of it into proper words. In the end, he doesn't have to. It's Nori who, without prompting, says, “He would hate me. He's arrested me ten times himself. Seen me in those cells. Or if he didn't he'd pity me. This way he gets to keep being hopeful about his one, and I don't actually have to hear him say he'd never want me.”_ _

__“But I thought the marks meant that we were supposed to be with them,” Ori says, pulling his sleeve down over on his own wrist. _Fíli, son of Vimli_._ _

__“The marks mean Mahal meant for us to be together, not that we have to. Things change in the world.” Nori is resting against the cheap railing at their backs, his eyes closed. He must be tired after being in that place. “The world changes us, chips at us, reshapes us. Sometimes we don't fit any more by the time we find one another. I was so excited when I heard his name that first time, wanted to throw myself at him, practically. Then I saw his uniform. Saw how he was. And I had my set forged the next day.” He holds up his covered wrist. “Gave him Lori's name when I was finally caught that first time. I couldn't do it. I couldn't tell him.”_ _

__Ori scuffs the rocking floor with his boot. “Aren't you unhappy?”_ _

__“Why would you think that?” Nori asks, wrapping an arm around Ori. “I've got you, and the rest of our family. I'm all right with it, really.” He's not even lying, Ori thinks, or hopes._ _

__“What were you doing? That they caught you? They called you a thief.” Ori bites his bottom lip, afraid. Is his beloved older brother really a cutpurse? A thief? His siblings had been so _unsurprised_ by the letter, so routine about what to do. They had known something Ori didn't, had hidden something from him. _ _

__Nori rolls his eyes, his melancholy gone for the time being it seems. “They caught me poaching again. It's not too bad, just the fine, and I'm rarely caught. They might start marking me though soon, so hopefully that was my last stay at the Tower for a few years at least. I managed to hide most of the profit thankfully. More than the fine. We'll be all right.”_ _

__He says it all so easily, as though it doesn't matter. Poaching is illegal though, and if he starts getting marks on his skin, he won't be able to do anything respectable, or even be allowed in the market. He'll be considered untrustworthy until the ink fades or they can get another inkist to cover it. “Why were you doing it?”_ _

__“Because I'm not really good at anything else,” Nori admits, his arm still around Ori. “Never had a good hand with metal, or gems, or food, or weaving. But I'm a damn fine hunter.” Their family isn't allowed to hunt though. Only Dwarves registered with Ered Luin families or nobles from Erebor can. “Don't worry about it. Our family is doing fine.” Whenever his siblings or his mother says that, he worries. Despite being down to two days, his own lessons are costing them more than they're comfortable losing, but Ori doesn't have the head for any of his siblings' skills. He cannot be a cook, or an armourer, or a miner. He cannot be a weaver and he cannot be a hunter._ _

__“I've decided I'll be a teacher,” he says to Nori, and gets a frown in response._ _

__“You're going to be a scribe,” Nori insists._ _

__“We can't afford it.” The little purse his siblings gave him is empty now, all used up to pay the fine and the fare to and from home. “I don't mind.” That's a lie, but it's a lie Nori needs._ _

__His elder brother curses in Khuzdul. “I'll get the damn money, one way or another. You're going to be a damn scribe.”_ _

__“We cannot _afford_ it,” Ori argues, but Nori looks at him, determined. _ _

__“I'll get the damn money.”_ _

__The rest of the ride home is quiet, Nori falling asleep. Ori helps him into the house, into bed. The rest of his siblings sweat through their fevers, breath laboured._ _

__Two mornings later, Ori goes to his Amad's room, a cool cloth in his hand, and finds she doesn't need it. She lies still on the bed, the chill and the fever gone from her flesh. Her eyes are open, half-lidded and clouded, one hand clenched in the covers._ _

__Ori is sixty-two, and he closes her eyes for her, so that she's only sleeping. Just sleeping._ _

__That day, he paints on one of his secluded walls. He's not skilled enough to paint her, so instead he makes the patterns of her braids, over and over, until he cannot move any more. He sits against the wall and cries and cries and cries. His throat is sore, his breathing difficult, face hot. But he cries still, even when it hurts._ _

__His thumb brushes over the name on his wrist, _Fíli, son of Vimli_.__

 _ _♦__

 _ _A few days journey away, at a small camp site, Fíli rubs at his chest. The phantom ache there has been bothering him since the morning. Nearby, his brother and uncle sleep, Kíli snoring a bit, Thorin clutching his sword._ _

__Fíli cannot sleep, the pain too much._ _

__Absently, he touches the name on his right wrist, _Ori, son of Cines__ _

__“Are you all right?” he asks the stars._ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another song that goes with this:
> 
> [Laughter Lines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ccFSXgdv5U) by Bastille.

Nori and Ori's sires come to the funeral. Dori and Mori's are both dead, Dori's in Erebor and Mori's somewhere on the road during their exile. Sori's is in the South, but they get a letter expressing sympathy from the next trade caravan that comes up a few months later, along with some notes they exchange for money with the bank. Nori's father, Spyros, a Firebeard, brings money as well. Not much, likely what he won playing dice the night before, but helpful. Cines, Ori's own sire, comes empty-handed, but Ori wasn't expecting much better of them. He wasn't expecting them at all, honestly.

“Hello, lad,” Cines says awkwardly, scratching at their dark brown beard. They're wearing it in twin braids now, almost to the middle of their slight chest. “You holding up?”

Ori shrugs, watching Spyros embrace Nori tightly before moving on to the rest of his siblings. He was always very friendly with the lot of them. “Yes.” There's not much else he can do beyond that. Hold up, keep moving. 

Cines rocks back and forth. “Right. You always were a little fighter.”

He's not sure how Cines would know that. Cines hadn't been all that interested in having a child, from how everyone has tried to delicately explain without hurting Ori's feelings. It's not as though Ori minds, overall. “I should go say hello to Spyros,” he says, and sees Cines relax a bit. They're not very good at being alone together. 

Spyros embraces Ori too tightly, as always, but he smells clean and his beard is neatly braided. “Poor little lad,” he says, ruffling Ori's hair, and now Ori smells the drink. He can see Dori over Spyros' shoulder, pinching the bridge of his nose, while Adjoa whispers to him. 

Once Spyros has released Ori, Ori finds Nori's side. His brother doesn't say anything, so Ori doesn't either. It's easier to just stand there together quietly, not thinking. 

They had dressed their mother in her nicest clothes, Dori and Sori repairing what was frayed beforehand, while Nori and Mori braided her hair and beard up. She'd always worn her hair and beard long, so it takes them a long time, long enough for Ori to polish all her jewellery. There's not much, and she would have been upset if they buried something valuable that they could sell. She has her bearing-beads though, and the plain band on her thumb that had been a gift from Dori's father. 

Adjoa had thought to put ribbons in her braids in place of the jewellery she didn't have, and Nori had found some red and pink ones. In her white-streaked red hair, it's becoming. 

“Lots of funerals today,” Nori says.

Ori nods. The fever has taken five more in their neighbourhood this week, all Dwarrows their mother's age and older except one, a baby a street over. His siblings are recovering at least, it seems. Nori has been ill for the past few days, but more like Ori than the rest. Sori and Samin are still at home resting today, their fevers broken at last, but still too weak to stand for this. 

Nori wraps an arm around Ori, pulling him in tight against his side. “Hey,” he says, ducking down so Ori has to meet his eyes. “Hey, we're going to be all right. I promise.” 

“I know,” Ori answers, looking back down at the ground. He does know. They're always all right, in the end. “Spyros is drunk.” Nori is a bit congested. Probably couldn't smell it, and he likes being prepared for how his sire can be when he's been in his cups.

“Of course he is,” Nori mumbles, rolling his eyes. “How long until Cines finds an excuse to leave?”

Ori thinks about it for a minute, weighing the odds. “Maybe a quarter-hour?”

“No, give them a whole half-hour,” Nori scoffs. 

“Bet you a biscuit,” Ori counters, his brother's eyebrows going up in interest. 

“I'll take that bet.” He tugs Ori along, staying close, as he leads them amongst the mourners. Mostly friends of his siblings, locals, people who live in their neighbourhood. People offer apologies, hands grasping Ori's. At least by staying close to one another, they can avoid any surprise embraces. 

Ori wishes he didn't have to be here. She would have understood if he went and hid, but at the same time, he's too anxious to leave her. He's never going to see her again, after all, and he wants to look at her, find anything he missed about her, some small detail he's overlooked in his whole life. 

He doesn't want her to go.

In the end though, she's laid to the stones with little trouble, sealed away inside the mountain forever, the lot of them lined up, their neighbours and friends watching them. People are crying, Adjoa included, but Ori already spent most of the morning crying, his throat still sore from it. It feels awkward any way, crying in front of people. 

“You owe me a biscuit,” he says to Nori, and his brother snorts into Ori's hair as quietly as possible. “Why did they even come?” 

“Cines loved her once, you know, much as they could. You weren't exactly planned, of course...” Nori teases, earning them a measured look from Dori. It says _behave_ , but Mori smirks on Ori's other side. “And Spyros wants to make himself useful. He still loved her a bit, I think, and you know he cares about us.”

Spyros is blinking a bit more than he should, but he's being quiet and respectful amongst the rest of the mourners as the Dedicate recites the prayers for the dead, the blessings for a safe journey to the Halls, and the pleas for Mahal's kindness on her children. Cines is nowhere to be seen, likely already slunk off to wherever it is they usually disappear to. He wishes Sori's sire, Jin, could have come. Jin is the best of the three living, easily. Colder than Spyros, but responsible and kind to them. 

The Dedicate is still speaking, but Ori's not much listening any more. Nori's arm is linked in his, and he's aware of that, of the stone under his feet and over his head. 

She's his mother, and now she's in the tombs. It feels odd, when he tries to force the fact into his mind.

Ori closes his eyes, leaning on Nori, and waits for it to be over. His _nadad_ , sometimes his favourite, rests against him as well, a little taller than Ori, his cheek against Ori's hair. Neither of them are all right. None of them, out of the seven of them, are all right. 

After it's over, Ori leaves the inside of the mountain, climbs up into his secluded area, and tries to think about anything else. Eventually, he falls somewhere between sleeping and waking, knees drawn up to his chest with his back to the stone, and stays that way for an hour or so. By the time he comes back to himself, out of his half-dreams, he almost believes that the reality is the dream, and she'll be at home. 

He wakes up completely eventually, of course, and then the ache begins anew. 

He has to go home, before anyone starts to really worry. The restaurant will be closed today, and people will understand, but they'll expect breakfast first thing in the morning. He needs to go home, help with preparation, and be in bed at a decent hour so he'll be ready in the morning. 

For now, he practises his maths with some of the chalk he keeps stashed here.

♦

The restaurant starts picking up later that year, after Samin recovers enough to work. She'll never be a miner again, but she has a good sense for pies, as it turns out, and before long, the little place is full at every meal time, mostly guards from the house that supposedly polices their neighbourhood. Ori's never seen them do much actual policing, beyond making sure the gambling doesn't get too ugly in the taverns and the brawls end with everyone alive.

They're usually a well-behaved lot though, and they have steady pay, so the restaurant has steady business. Well-behaved, as much as guards can be described that way. Ori starts to dread the midday and supper shifts, the leering comments about his sweet face digging under his skin like splinters. Adjoa assures him they mean no harm, and their jokes make Dori and Samin laugh, but Ori would rather they left him alone. He's old enough to wear his wrist covered now, so he starts to wear a ribbon around it when he's out in public. One too many jokes about being Fíli, son of Vimli, gets to him. 

One guard in particular takes a shine to him, a young guard with his blond braids in rows along his skull, and wide cheekbones. He watches Ori with interest, until Ori's stomach tightens with dread just thinking about him. By now, the butcher's boy is engaged to the Dwarf who wears his name, and Ori is still too embarrassed to go into the shop.

The guard's name is Baduur. He starts asking Ori to come out for drinks with him, lingering after the rest of his mates leave. Ori says no, makes excuses, until he doesn't have any more to make, and he agrees to drinks. They have little in common, and Ori isn't sure he likes him very much, but he kisses well enough. 

Baduur finds the one who carries the name on his wrist. Ori's disappointed, but he's not sure why.

It isn't as though he bears Ori's name or vice versa. Besides, he has more important things to do in the end.

Nori has kept his word, and somehow, the money for a master has appeared.

He chooses not to ask Nori where the money comes from, and no one else does either, but one night, Ori hears loud swearing. He ventures out of his room, the floor cold on his bare feet as he creeps quietly down the hall and to the stairs. He stays at the top, stays hidden, watching Dori and Mori hunched over Nori, lying on his stomach on the kitchen table. It's Nori swearing, Mori's quick needle moving in and out of Nori's skin while Dori holds him still. 

“You're too small to be going after a boar,” Mori says, and Ori's eyes widen. “Damn it, Nori, that was stupid.”

“At least he got it,” Dori replies, defending Nori. “Ori needs a real trade. This is the only way.”

“Couldn't be convenient, could he?” Mori asks, Ori drawing into himself on the steps, ashamed. “All right, that's all stitched up. No one saw you, did they?” 

“No,” Nori answers, hissing as Mori applies something Ori can smell all the way from the stairs to the wound with a clean cloth. “Good thing too, until I can get another cuff. Damn stupid beast.” 

Ori squints, and sees his brother's bare wrist. 

“Here's a thought,” Dori suggests, helping Nori into his shirt. “Just tell the noble and marry him. We'd have money, Nori.” Dori sounds tired. He always sounds tired though. “And you wouldn't have to do this any more. You could hunt _legally_. Our family would be safe.” 

Still hidden, Ori picks at the loose threads in his nightshirt. There's more than there were yesterday, a rip forming from where he snagged it on a rough piece of wood in his attic. He'd sanded it down today, removing more than a fair bit of a creature called a sphinx that he'd copied from his master's book, but there's still a tear forming. 

“Why are you so convinced it will work out that way?” Nori winces when he moves, and Ori curls up even smaller into himself. “He's a noble, Dori. He doesn't want a husband from the Tin Borough with a law mark on his arm.” 

Nori had earned the mark at last this year, the rune for _thief_ now in his skin, just above where his cuff usually sits. 

“You don't know what he wants,” Mori says, banging a bowl down in the sink. “You've built him up in your head, you know that? Because you don't know him. You don't actually know anything about the Dwarf. For all you know, he kicks dogs.” 

“He'd sooner kick another noble than a dog,” Nori says sharply, startling Ori. “He's a good Dwarf.”

“And you were nearly gored by a boar so we can afford Ori's lessons,” Mori returns, just as sharply. 

“Shove off, Mori!” 

“Shut it, both of you!” Dori barks, giving Mori a smack on the arm and waving a finger in Nori's face. “Do you want to wake the whole house? Now stop it. You can fight in the morning.” Dori turns, and before Ori can scurry back up the steps, he spots him. The rag from cleaning the bloody tools is still in his hands. “Ori, what are you doing up?” 

Nori and Mori both look up now, horrified. “Now, Ori -” Nori starts, but Ori flees. 

He doesn't get very far, because Mori has dashed up the stairs after him, and she's always been bigger and faster. She grabs Ori, stopping him before he can reach the steps to the attic, and they stand there in the dark hallway for a minute, Mori catching her breath, Ori starting to cry. 

“No,” she orders, pulling him in close. “ _No_. You listen to me, Ori. I don't care what you heard, what you're thinking right now is wrong. Mam is gone, all right? So it's our job to take care of you and make sure you can take care of yourself. You're going to be a damn scribe, all right?”

“Nori got hurt!” Ori protests.

“Because Nori is an idiot!” Mori replies, shaking her head. “He gets hurt all the time! He nearly lost an eye last week in a dice game! He's not exactly the shiniest out of the lot of us!” 

Ori shakes his head. “I'll stop my lessons, I will -”

Mori punches him in the arm. “You little brat. Do you know what I've put up with to get that money? All those nobs and their demands. 'Ooh, could you do a rose pattern on the lace instead? I know you've spent three bloody weeks putting in the star pattern but Lady Sod Off had rose and I want rose'. You're finishing the damn apprenticeship, do you hear me? Or I'll pin you up by your braids.” His sister gives him a final shake. “Do you hear me?”

He nods, because he does. 

"You'll be a wonderful scribe, and you'll do us proud," she says, unexpectedly tender as she brushes his hair back. "Little love, you're so smart. You're so much more clever than the rest of us. You deserve to be a scribe, and if I have to listen to a hundred idiots whine about their wedding veils for it, I will. All right?" She knocks their foreheads together. "All right?"

"All right," Ori agrees.

“Go to bed,” she says not as harshly as she usually might, releasing him. “It's past midnight.” 

Ori does as she says, climbing the ladder into his little attic room. He lies there, the covers pulled to his shoulders, until he hears them going to bed. No one else comes to his ladder, as follows the shapes on his walls with his eyes, attempting to soothe himself back to sleep. 

The next morning, Nori is gone, off on another hunt, he knows. Ori worries, thinking that with the wound, his brother might be too slow to evade the soldiers if they found his traps or his weapons. Nori has a bow with a quiver of arrows hidden somewhere in the forest, and spears as well, both illegal for their untitled family. If he's caught again, it won't be a fine this time. 

His master raises her rates after another year, and somehow the money appears. The next year, she raises them again, and again the year after that, and Ori works out she doesn't want a lad from the Tin Borough as an apprentice.

She's still the cheapest though.

Ori is sixty-six when Nori comes home from a hunt and he doesn't have money from a kill. Instead, he empties a bag of jewellery onto the kitchen table, where they can all see, even Ori. There's a few rings, a necklace, a pin in the shape of a leaping deer, and a handful of hair ornaments. 

Dori grips the table, breathing out hard through his nose. “No,” he says. 

“I'll cancel my apprenticeship,” Ori offers, pressed between Sori and Mori. 

“I already paid that off for the year,” Nori says, rolling his injured shoulder. “Couldn't get any game though.”

“ _No_ ,” Dori says again.

Nori just shakes his head. “Where will we live, then? Above the restaurant? The seven of us, in those two rooms?” He looks up across the table at the rest of them. “Landlord is raising the rent on the whole street, and the taxes went up this year too. We'll just break even with this, after I get it melted down.” When Dori turns away, Nori says to him, “No one saw me. No one will even suspect me. I've always been a poacher, not a thief proper.”

“That's not the point,” Adjoa replies, her hand over her mouth. “Nori, you didn't have to do this.”

“What was our other option? Loans?” Even Ori knows that none of the banks in Ered Luin would loan them a thing. They're common shopkeepers for the most part, and they own nothing for collateral. “You two don't have to take care of this family on your own.” 

Dori's shoulders are shaking as Nori stands and embraces him, the rest of them standing around the table still. Ori leans on Mori, his sister wrapping her arms around him in response. “It's all right,” Nori mutters, in Khuzdul. “We're going to be all right.” 

The stolen goods are put back in the little leather pouch. Ori never sees any of it again, but he sees the relief in his siblings' shoulders over the next few days, as the landlord is paid off and the taxes are collected without fuss. Some of their neighbours are gone by the end of the week, unable to come up with the money. 

Ori lies in his little bedroom in his childhood home, tracing the grooves in the floorboards, listening to his siblings move about the house as he always has, for as long as he can remember. 

His master is often harsh with him these days, because Ori is apparently still too far behind the other students who have been studying with her since they were children. She criticises the way he holds a quill, uncaring that he'd never held one until he began his apprenticeship, and how few classics he's been able to read, how slow he is to translate them from Khuzdul to Westron. His Khuzdul accent is apparently common, too Ered Luin to be considered acceptable.

Dori has him speak in Khuzdul at home now, tirelessly correcting him until Ori can at least mimic the correct sounds, even when it's not how he naturally wants to say the words. Samin sits over him as he mimes writing with a proper quill, really a hawk feather Nori had brought home, correcting his posture. She had been a dancer once, before the mines, before meeting Mori. Before her leg.

Eventually, his master finds other flaws in him, as he corrects those. To Ori, it seems he's just too common in general for her to feel he's worth her time. She's a noble in name, from what he knows, but not one in finances, and she doesn't have enough wealthy noble children to fill her books. Ori is at least somewhat connected to the line of Durin, enough she'll put up with his presence. He's still not sure exactly how he's connected, but he is.

Ori spends more and more time in his secret places, practising his letters and his sums, but most of all, his drawings. His new master might be unkind, but being her apprentice gives him access to the great Library, where he finds many books about drawing. His technique improves, until he can finally draw proper portraits at seventy. Sometimes, he tries to remember his mother's face, but it's never right. She's been gone eight years, and it shows in his memory. 

He's drawing one day when his arm seizes up suddenly, and he cries out in pain, cradling it to his chest. There's no injury, nothing he can see, but his arm still hurts badly. He packs up his things and goes home to show Mori. 

His sister inspects his arm, feeling along the muscles. “Does it feel like a new bruise?” He nods, and she lets him go. “Nothing I can do for you, little love. It's not you who's hurt. Fíli, son of Vimli is.” 

“What?” Ori asks, confused. 

“You're old enough that your bond is growing stronger. You're going to start feeling it when he's hurting bad.”

Ori bites his lip, rubbing at his arm. “It really hurts.”

“Well, he probably broke it,” Mori dismisses easily, shrugging. “You know, I felt it when Samin lost her leg. Hurt like you wouldn't believe. It's just a phantom ache though. It'll pass soon enough, and it won't do you any real harm.”

He rubs his arm petulantly, not sure he likes this. His arm is sore for a few days, but it fades by the time the week is up. It's inconvenient, his left being his dominant hand, and his master gets after him when he's too slow with his right hand. 

He wonders what Fíli, son of Vimli, is feeling.

Nori is a proper thief by the time Ori is seventy, no longer just a poacher. Samin's old injury acts up more days than not in the winter, and she cannot always work. The restaurant continues to do well, but that only means it breaks even plus a little more. Sori's skills as an armourer give them a little extra, and Mori makes more and more as a seamstress. It's never enough to keep them comfortable though, so Nori puts the same skills that make him a good hunter towards a different prey. 

Ori lifts the ribbon he wears now and traces the letters on his wrist more and more often, remembering his arm. He could feel him, Fíli, son of Vimli. The older he gets, the less he believes he'll actually meet him. Their people are scattered to the winds, and for all he knows, Fíli, son of Vimli, lives with the Dwarves in the far South, or the far East, and they two shall never really meet. Or they will, and Fíli, son of Vimli, will not be a Dwarf Ori could love. 

Or he won't love Ori. Whichever. 

Things are at least stable, and mostly safe then. It doesn't last.

He's nearing seventy-one the day Dwalin finds out the truth, but he marks the day less for that, and instead for the changes it brings about.

It's a tavern brawl. Ori is allowed out with Nori now for drinks, old enough to be trusted to know his limits. It's just the pair of them that night, out for a rare drink, Nori wanting to play a few rounds with the others who throw dice. Nori wins a little extra, maybe cheating, maybe not, so they have three drinks apiece, but then Ori wins a round by chance, encouraged to play by Nori's friends. He drinks a little more than he should, spirits this time because that's what one of Nori's friends buy him. 

Where things go wrong, he's not sure, cannot focus enough to remember, but there's a fight, a real fight, and in retrospect, Dwalin never should have been in their neighbourhood. Ori never learns why he was. It doesn't matter, really.

Dwalin _is_ there, is what matters, wading into the fight and breaking it apart, his two axes enough to deter anyone wanting to keep on. No one wants to cross a noble, not one who wears a guard's uniform and carries both two axes and a war hammer. He drags Nori out of the fray, Ori trailing, and helps Nori stand against the wall.

“Idiot, are you ever not in trouble?” Dwalin is huffing. “You're going to get yourself killed. And your little brother too!”

“Nori, are you all right?” Ori asks. Because he's had too many drinks. 

Dwalin cages Nori in then, keeping Nori from escaping, and as Ori watches, Dwalin demands, quietly, “What did he just call you?” Desperate. So desperate. 

“Let me go,” Nori pleads, and Ori, drunk and frightened, clutches the wall. “He needs to go home, just let me take him home -”

“What did he call you?” Dwalin asks, louder, and grabs at Nori's covered wrist. “Damn it, what did he call you?” 

Nori looks at Ori, then up at Dwalin, his shoulders slumped. “He called me Nori. My name. Nori, son of Spyros.” 

Dwalin releases him, steps back. “Take your little brother home,” he orders, and walks away from them both, back into the tavern. 

Ori is sick in the alley by the tavern, Nori holding his braids back while he is, rubbing his back until he's done. His older brother takes him home, puts him to bed, leaves a tin cup of water by the bed. Nori is still there in the morning, but that morning, Dwalin, son of Fundin, comes to their front door and Nori hides in Ori's little attic room with Ori while Dori and Adjoa handle him. 

They can hear him, all the way in the attic. Can hear him demanding to see Nori, can hear Dori's quiet refusal, Adjoa's louder. Eventually, Samin makes her way down the stairs, and joins the argument. 

“I'm so sorry,” Ori says into his knees. 

“Bound to find out sooner or later,” Nori replies, looking down at his crossed legs. “But damn it, you know you can't handle spirits!”

“I'm sorry,” Ori repeats. 

“Now he knows! He knows what I am!” Nori stands, stooping a bit, until he stands in the middle of the room, where he can stand straight. “He knows, you little idiot. He knows.” 

“I'm sorry,” Ori says, his throat tight, and his eyes wet. “I'm so sorry, Nori -”

“Everything I've done for you, and you couldn't keep one damn secret!”

“I'm sorry -”

“Just be quiet!” 

So Ori obeys, and he's quiet. He hears Dwalin downstairs, growing steadily louder, asking to see Nori, and he hears Dori and his sisters arguing with him. He hears Nori and his quiet crying, sees his brother wrap his arms around himself and know he isn't allowed to comfort him. Nori doesn't want him right now, and Ori is miserable over it. This is his fault, all his fault. 

“Please,” Ori hears, down below. “I just want to speak with him.”

“He gave you a false name, he wears a _sanbay_ ,” Mori shouts. Ori hadn't heard her come down, but she is now. “I would think you would get the hint! Now get out of our house!” 

“I want to see him!”

“Out, Lord Dwalin!” Samin says, loudly, enough both Nori and Ori look up in surprise. Samin is not like her wife. She does not shout. She does not get angry. But she is now. “My wife has told you how it is, and he hasn't come out of hiding, has he? He doesn't want to see you. So get out of our home. He knows who you are, and he knows how to find you.”

Samin is of Durin's line. Distantly, but closer than them, close enough she carries the name. Close enough Dwalin must respect her, despite her missing leg, despite her poverty. He must respect her. 

Dwalin is quiet. They are all quiet, both Nori and Ori holding their breath in the attic. 

“He has a law mark,” Samin says, when no one else speaks for a long moment. “You're a guard, and you're of Durin's line. What can you really offer him?”

“You're of Durin's line.”

“And I grew up here, in Tintown,” Samin says, using the slang for their borough. “And I'm missing a leg, if you haven't noticed. I'm not exactly diamond-standard. What's Nori going to be? Your concubine? 'Cause your family isn't ever going to allow that marriage, marks be damned.”

Nori bites the web between his index finger and his thumb. “Don't think I've ever heard her say so many words at once,” he says to Ori, a joke. A quiet one, an _I'm sorry for shouting_ joke. 

Ori isn't even seventy-one, after all.

“It's my choice,” Dwalin says. 

“You are the second son.” Without hearing her, Ori knows Samin is shifting her cane between her fingers. “Your lord brother dictates your choices.” When Dwalin doesn't immediately argue, she says, “He's making his choice. Get out of our house.”

“You could speak with him,” Ori desperately suggests. “Things might not be how you think they are.”

“I'm a known poacher and a thief,” Nori responds, faded from himself as he looks down the ladder. “What could we even have in common?”

“But he has your name,” Ori insists.

“He's a nob,” Nori replies. 

Dwalin leaves after Samin says something in Ereborian Khuzdul that Ori doesn't catch. 

Nori goes out Ori's window that day. He's slight like Ori is, like both their sires. He doesn't come home for a fortnight, the six of them growing steadily more afraid that something has happened to him, some old job catching up with him, or worse, the law. Ori doesn't go to any of his secret places, too anxious that he'll miss Nori. 

When he does come home, he's not wearing his cuff any more, but instead, a set of leather vambraces and layers of clothes in dark, sombre colours. His elaborate hair is up in travelling braids, and by the time Ori walks in the door, he's already sitting at the table with Dori and Adjoa, a mug of tea in front of him. 

He goes right to Nori, hugging him tight, his _nadad_ hugging him back. “I'm sorry, Nori, I'm really sorry.”

“I couldn't have kept it a secret forever. They were going to take the cuff off one of these times any way.” Ori steps back, fiddling with his sleeves. “Don't know why I even bothered. Putting off the inevitable, really.” 

Something has happened, Ori can see it in their faces. “If you tell him to leave you alone, maybe he will.”

“Dwalin is stubborn,” Nori replies, his tea in his hands. “I tried to talk to him, make him see reason. He wouldn't hear it. He's convinced of that soul mate nonsense, no offence,” he adds to Dori and Adjoa. “I'm not going to ruin his career.” 

“So what are you going to do?” Ori asks. 

“Some mates of Lori's have offered me a spot on their ship.” 

“Doing what?” 

His brother doesn't answer him, but Dori and Adjoa both look upset, so it cannot be good. Ori realizes he never actually knew just what Lori had done for trade. No one ever talked about it in their house. 

“Better you don't know,” Nori finally says. “I wanted to say my good-byes first. I'll be gone for at least half a year, maybe a whole year. I'm not sure. Depends on the weather and the flooding. But I'll send money notes, and letters.” He reaches for Ori's hand, squeezes it. “You can correct my spelling for me. Might even be able to get a hold of some rarer goods while I'm away. Presents for the lot of you.”

Ori doesn't want presents, he wants his family to stay together.

“All right,” Ori says, squeezing Nori's hand back. “You have to write though. Don't forget.” 

“I won't.” 

Nori waits until their sisters get home, saying good-bye to each of them. No one wants him to go, but none of them say anything, not even Mori. There's no changing his mind, and probably not Dwalin's either. 

He's gone by sunset, their house just that much emptier. None of his sisters talk to him about what's going on, nor Dori. They blame him, they must blame him, this is all his fault. If he had been more careful, if he hadn't played those silly games, if he had just been _better_ , Nori would be home, fighting with Mori over whose turn it was to set the table. They must blame him, and Ori doesn't want to see it in their faces, hear it in their words. 

He doesn't want his supper. Instead, he sneaks out the window, trying to copy what Nori always did. He loses his footing at the bottom and falls, but catches himself, hurting his shoulders when he has to grab the ledge. But he gets himself down without being noticed.

Why did he drink the spirits? How could he have been so foolish?

He climbs up out of the tunnel that leads to the otherwise useless space he uses, and slips through the mountain shrubs and evergreens to it. 

But there's music coming from his secret place today. 

When he dares come closer, he sees the two Dwarves who have found it, and swears to himself. They're only around his age, but their clothes are good quality and obviously made for them, not second-hand. Not only that, they have weapons. And a fiddle! A proper one, not one like what the musicians have in the tavern. 

“Look at these,” the black-haired one is saying, touching some of Ori's old drawings. “Who do you think did them all?”

“Someone with too much time,” the blond replies. He's the one with the fiddle, and again, he raises it to his shoulder and plays a little melody. He's tuning it, Ori sees, trying to correct something. He has two short swords in their scabbards beside him, and the other has a bow and quiver leaning against the wall. Ori's never known a Dwarf trained with a bow, beyond Nori, and his brother was self-taught as far as he knows. Are they poachers? “They're quite good though.”

“Wish I was half this good at my letters,” the black-haired one muses, rocking back and forth on his heels. 

The blond snorts. “You wish you knew all your letters.”

“Oh, ha-ha, you're so very witty.” They're brothers, Ori thinks, or at least very close. 

And poachers or not, they're in his spot, and the black-haired one is rubbing at the patterns -! All of Ori's anger and self-hatred bubbles up, and for the first time in his whole life, he comes storming out of the trees, shouting, “Stop that right now, that took me hours! Do you always go around ruining things that aren't yours?” 

The blond has a sword in hand before Ori can get much further, the tip of it just almost brushing the centre of Ori's chest. “Easy there,” he advises arrogantly. “Don't go causing more trouble than you can handle, yeah?” 

“Sorry,” the black-haired one says, holding his hands out. “I didn't mean any harm.” He comes over and knocks his brother's sword down. “Fíli, stop it. What's he going to do, shout me to death? If that was even possible, Mum and Uncle would have achieved it long ago.” 

_Fíli_.

“I would have achieved it by now,” the blond grumbles, sheathing the sword. 

_Fíli._ His name is Fíli.

Ori stares at him, even as the black-haired one continues to speak. “This your spot? Sorry, we were hiding out from our lessons. Just liked the decorations, is all.” He leans over, trying to catch Ori's eye. “So, I'm Kíli, and the surly one is my elder brother, Fíli.” 

“Spell 'surly',” the blond, Fíli, drawls, picking his fiddle back up. 

He might not be the right Fíli. He's tall, taller than Ori, with a strong nose and braids framing his face and in his moustaches, some of his hair gathered up in the back and secured with a metal clasp. To wield two swords, he must be strong. Very strong. 

“Don't need to spell it if I know what it means,” Kíli replies smartly. “Sorry about him, can't take him anywhere. What are you called then?”

The temptation to lie is on the tip of his tongue. This Fíli is wealthy at the very least, after all. What does he want with an apprentice from Tintown? And it had worked for Nori for so many years, but look how that's ended? Nori is gone, and Ori won't see him for at last half a year, their little family broken up even more that it already was. 

Fíli is disinterested in Ori, plucking at his fiddle's strings, as Ori says, “Ori.”

Kíli's eyes widen, looking at his brother, as Ori drops his eyes to the ground. They're both wearing good boots, new, or near it. “And you just pointed a sword at him,” Kíli says, whistling. “Only you, Fíli.” 

“Shut it, Kíli,” Fíli quietly says. 

He lifts Ori's chin with his fingers. Over his shoulder, he sees Kíli holding the fiddle now, sees him turning away from the pair of them. 

“Ori, son of Cines?” Fíli asks, hopeful. No one's ever been hopeful about Ori before.

The moment is strained, more than Ori thought it would be when he thought of this. Only he did just point a sword at Ori and that's not really an ideal first meeting. He's not sure what to say. So he swallows, and pulls back his left sleeve, holding it up for this Fíli to see. He takes Ori's hand and studies it, tracing the name with the tips of his fingers and -

Ori swallows, trying to slow down the rush inside of himself, the urge to throw his arms around this Dwarf's neck and feel him hold Ori in return. It won't stop though, flooding his chest and _how did Nori resist for so long?_

“You're _my_ Ori,” Fíli breathes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really unsure of this fic. How weird is it to have your soulmate's name on you? Yet convenient. Like in My Little Pony when their marks tell them their destiny/talents. Weird, but useful. (I swear, if I have to watch any more MLP over the next week, I'm going to bang my head into the wall)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy times!

“So you taught yourself?” Fíli is following a large drawing Ori did last week of a herd of deer, not touching, his fingers just hovering over it. 

“No, as I said, I had books,” Ori replies, working on a new pattern. After the initial shock, Kíli all but outright laughing while Fíli stumbled through an introduction of his own, they'd all three of them settled down. Drawing at least makes him feel less awkward around the pair. “My first teacher got me started, but then I got better. So she let me use books.”

“We've had lessons since we were children, and neither of us can draw half this well,” Fíli says, looking at Ori. Ori doesn't look back. If he looks at Fíli too long, he starts to feel a bit ridiculous. He's a handsome Dwarf, and even if he wasn't Fíli, son of Vimli, Ori would want to look at him. 

“Maybe if we actually went to those lessons,” Kíli remarks. He's doing something with his arrows, and Ori wants to ask, but he knows if he does, he'll give himself away. “We're rather lazy. Everyone tells us.”

Fíli smirks, shaking his head. Ori glares at his own drawing, bristling at the pair of them for taking something like lessons for granted. People with means take everything for granted, from what he knows of them. “You shouldn't waste your master's time,” he dares, biting his lip after. That wasn't a smart thing to say. 

The silence that follows feels awkward, but Ori keeps drawing. This is his space. They can leave, no matter if he's Fíli, son of Vimli. 

“He was only joking,” Fíli says, sitting by Ori, leaning down to try and meet Ori's eyes. “We're not really that bad. Just not very good at sitting still for hours, see? And the only reason we're skiving off today is because our master is cross, and neither of us feeling like taking the brunt of it any more.” That's...understandable. 

“What pulled his beard?” Kíli asks. “He's been in a foul mood for days, him and Dwalin both. I take it back, Dwalin's been worse. You know, he hit me with Grasper the other day. I have a bruise!” Fíli scoffs, his brother throwing an apple at him from his bag. 

Fíli catches it one-handed. 

Outwardly, Ori tries not to react. Out of everyone they could be connected to. “You don't mean Captain Dwalin, of the guard?” Dwalin is not exactly a common name, but there's more than one. 

“You know him?” Fíli offers the apple to Ori. He wouldn't take it if he'd had his supper, but he didn't, so he does, and Fíli takes out another for himself. “Lord Balin is our master, that's Dwalin's older brother.”

“I've met him,” Ori admits, settling back with the apple. Lying would be easier, but it hasn't done Nori any favours. Better to tell the truth, as much as he can. “But not like you. He's arrested my brother a few times and I've had to come get him from the Tower.” 

Silence again, Fíli visibly taken aback. “Oh,” he says. “I've been there with my uncle a few times. It's not a good place to end up.” 

“It's not like he's ever stayed more than a few weeks, at most.” He's defensive. Why? Fíli obviously doesn't mean anything by it. They never do. “He's just always in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The forest, or a butcher's shop when the guards decided to show up, the gambling dens when a raid came. A fight he had no business being in. “Dwalin's never unkind.” 

Some guards have been since that first time. They usually all like to take a swing at their mother, at Ori and the rest, how not a one of them shares a sire. Sometimes they tell Ori he's going to end up like Nori. That's usually the extent of it. But there are times when Nori is bruised a bit more than he should, when he rides home on the trolley with his jaw clenched. Times when they leer at Ori a bit more than is appropriate for his age, make jokes about reducing the fine. Almost never where Nori can hear, but every now and then. 

Dwalin is never that way, and no guard ever behaves badly when he's on duty. Ori guesses that means Nori's right about him, that he's a good Dwarf. 

“He wouldn't hurt anyone,” Fíli agrees. “Look, I'm sorry about the sword, really. I was just...I mean, you came out of nowhere, and I just...”

Ori shrugs. It's not how he saw their first meeting going. He's never been sure what to expect for their first meeting. He certainly never thought it would be so awkward. It never seems that way for anyone else when they describe it. “It's fine.” He hasn't had an apple in awhile. They're not his favourites. But it's still good in his stomach, makes him feel less light-headed. 

It's hard not to look at Fíli. He's handsome. Ori would want to look even if his name wasn't Fíli, but the weapons would have deterred his interest. They're not doing much for him now either. He doesn't know anyone who openly carries weapons unless they're out for trouble. Or just trouble, the sort Dori and the rest don't want Ori around. 

“Why do you have swords?” he asks, eyeing them over his apple. 

“Oh, I'm an armourer.” Fíli holds his hand out, and his brother lobs one at him, so Fíli can pull it out of its scabbard to show Ori the shining metal. “These were my mastery work. You like them?”

“I've never seen a sword up close before,” Ori says, swallowing another bite of apple. 

“Really? How?” 

Ori's rather sure they're nobles now, not poachers. They're both arrogant in that way that sort always are, and poachers wouldn't want to carry the extra weight of a weapon such as a sword. “We live in Tintown. We're not allowed to carry weapons openly. And I don't leave the neighbourhood much.” Fíli, son of Vimli. This is seeming more and more like a little joke for Mahal. Dwalin and Nori. Fíli and Ori. What a mess. “You shouldn't be here with them, either. Guards patrol here, and they'll want to see your family sigils. They think throwing nobles in the Tower is fun, and they get the fine money as well.”

Kíli is chuckling quietly to himself, getting out a pipe and packing it. Fíli isn't laughing. 

“They wouldn't be putting us in the Tower,” Fíli says, settling his elbows on his knees, his hands linked in the middle, fingers just barely hooked around another. “You don't know my name, do you? I mean, you know it, but you don't _know_ it?” 

Ori shakes his head. 

“Kíli, occupy yourself somewhere else,” Fíli orders. Ori's not sure he wants to be alone with him just yet. He sort of does, in a way. He's just confused about the whole matter, is all. “Go check the traps or something.” 

“Fine,” Kíli grumbles, handing his pipe over to Fíli. No point in wasting it, Ori thinks, while Fíli takes a puff of it. He offers it to Ori while Kíli slips the quiver on and grabs his bow, but Ori's never smoked before, and he doesn't want to start now. He'll just end up coughing and looking foolish. 

Once Kíli is gone, disappearing into the trees, they're well and truly alone for the first time. Ori's heart isn't beating right, sticking in his chest and then fluttering a bit before picking back up. He wants to curl up further into himself, or just go home and hide in his little room, pretend none of this is happening. This is ridiculous. 

Fíli reaches for his hand, and Ori meets him halfway. “Fíli, son of Vimli,” Fíli reads, smirking. “Mahal can be funny sometimes. No one calls me this. I'm hardly even called by my name proper by some. They think my mother should have given me one for her line, for my uncle.” He brushes his thumb over the name. “So I'm called Fíli, son of Dís. Or, sometimes, Fíli, heir of Thorin Oakenshield.” 

Ori wants his hand back. He wants to stand and run, back into the woods and his tunnel, through the streets and home. His stomach hurts enough he wants to cry, more than anything. “That can't be.” It's not true. Fíli is having a joke on Ori, playing a game, or he's just a liar altogether. 

Beside him, still beside him, Fíli pulls a ring off his finger and hands it to Ori, so he can see it. See the the silver it's made from. No, not silver. It's too bright to be silver, too hard. And carved into it are the sigils for Durin's direct line. Ori's seen it in his books plenty of times. No one but who Fíli claims to be would have this. 

He gives it back, and Fíli slides it back on the finger with a bit of effort. “Was my grandfather's, King Thráin's,” he explains. “He passed it to his daughter, my mother, Princess Dís, and my mother gave it to me when I got my mastery.”

“So that makes you...” It's too unbelievable. Ori doesn't want to believe it at all. 

Fíli puffs on the pipe for a few moments, while Ori tries to get his head together. This is absolutely ridiculous. 

“I don't understand,” he admits, because usually when he does, someone will eventually explain things. 

“We don't hold Erebor,” Fíli says, looking out over the trees. “Why does it matter?”

“Only nobles think being nobles doesn't matter,” Ori replies by rote. Everyone says that in his neighbourhood. It doesn't seem to make Fíli very happy to hear. They never like being reminded of their privilege either, Dori always says. “Sorry.”

“Guess you're not wrong.” 

He's not.

Fíli blows a smoke ring through a smoke ring. Nori can do that trick. “I've spent all this time thinking about you. I wondered what you were like. Never thought you'd reject me in less than a quarter hour.” He's so obviously disappointed. “You might like me, you know. We might be good together.” 

Ori still can't say Fíli's title out loud, so he's not so sure about that. He has a point though. All this time, all those night rubbing the letters of Fíli's name and wondering himself about who he was. Nori might have put himself out over the shale, but Ori's not. And they have one another's names! It has to mean _something_. If it doesn't, what's the point? 

Fíli's hand is heavy in Ori's. His name is right there, on Fíli's wrist, written in clear script. Thinner than they are thick, with just the littlest hint of flourish, the punctuation surprisingly bold. This is his name, marking Fíli down to his very soul. “You're really telling the truth?”

“Sorry,” Fíli replies, hitching a shoulder apologetically. “But technically, I am His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Fíli, first-born son of Her Highness, Princess Dís, heir of His Majesty, King Thorin Oakenshield.” 

Ori stares at him for a good moment or two. Then he falls forward, his head on Fíli's shoulder, and he's laughing and it's absolutely mad. This is mad. 

Fíli smells really good, but that's sort of irrelevant, maybe, except it makes Ori's stomach bubble up like foam on the top of beer. 

“Well, at least you're laughing now,” Fíli drawls. He wraps his arm around Ori, so now Ori is settled under his arm. They're good heights for this. Of course they are. “You never thought it would be me? That I was your Fíli?” 

“I didn't know your name,” Ori confesses, wincing a little. “I mean, down in Tintown, we know the king, I mean of course we do. He's Thorin Oakenshield. And we know your mother, sort of.” Well, he knew there was a princess, that Thorin Oakenshield had a sister. “And that he has sister-sons. But...”

“You don't know our names?” And now Fíli is laughing. “No one knows our names down there?”

“Well, I'm sure someone does,” Ori hedges. Thorin Oakenshield was as far away from him as the moon and the sun. People in his neighbourhood knew him, adored him, loved him. But Ori loves the mountain too. Doesn't mean he's ever seen the top of it. And they all know Thorin Oakenshield has sister-sons as his heirs. 

But there's taxes and rent and food shortages and trades. There's children. There's guards. There's dice games. 

A king like Thorin Oakenshield is a very nice thing to think about, but life is a daily sort of thing that doesn't really concern kings. “He's your uncle?”

“Do I not pass muster?” Fíli is grinning, and that makes Ori's stomach bubble up too, into his chest and filling his throat. “Terribly sorry. Maybe I'll have a great battle where I have to use a carrot for a sword.”  
Ori laughs. “Fíli Carrotsword.”

“Doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?” 

“Not really.” 

Laughing is easy between them. It shouldn't be. They don't know one another, for one. For another, Fíli, son of Vimli, is also called, _Your Royal Highness_. But he's making Ori laugh. Ori looks up at him, comfortable under Fíli's arm, under the weight of him. 

“You've got my name on you,” Fíli says. Ori can feel his fingers through his shirt. “It says Fíli, son of Vimli. My father. Not my uncle. And you know, if we're going off that...” He has dimples. His Fíli has dimples. Of course. Of course he does. “I'm not forcing you to stay around, if you don't want to.” 

Ori thinks about it. He rests his head against Fíli, leaning into him a bit more. “I've got your name. It means something, doesn't it?”

“My family keeps to Mahal. I was always taught it was.” Ori's family isn't too religious, by contrast. Sori is, because she's an armourer, and Dori and Adjoa occasionally pray to the fire. But Ori wasn't brought up to pay much heed to it. He guesses once his siblings realized he wouldn't work with it, it wasn't relevant. “Why do you think he wrote names on us, any way?” 

“I don't know. Maybe he didn't want us to be lonely.” Mahal had been lonely, according to the texts Ori has read, before he met his wife. He had made their people so he wouldn't be alone. “What do you think?”

“He wanted us to be happy.” Fíli sounds more sure. “How old are you, any way?” 

This is just ridiculous, really. How had Dori and Adjoa managed this, Mori and Samin? How had Nori stayed away, on the other hand? This feels as nothing else ever has, even if Fíli is _His Royal Highness_ , technically. 

“Seventy, seventy-one in a month or so. I'm an apprentice scribe.” 

“You're younger than Kíli,” Fíli whistles. “I'm eighty, just turned. Kíli is five years younger. How old were you when you got your mark?” 

“Twenty. My family was awful about it. Dori had to tell them all to mind their own business, but Nori showed me his mark. I liked that.” It had been fun, being given a secret when he was so little. Nori never told anyone anything if he could help it. “Dori and Nori are my brothers.” 

“So you have siblings too? I've just got Kíli.”

“There's seven of us, altogether, when you count my law-siblings. I'm the youngest.” 

“ _Seven_?” It's an impressive number. Ori doesn't say they were once eight. Maybe later on. “And you're the youngest? Damn, but I'm never going to be allowed to be alone with you, am I?”

Ori shrugs. They've never minded him going around with lads from the neighbourhood. Leery of Baduur, because he was a guard, but they might not be so easy about a noble. About Fíli, even if he was Fíli, son of Vimli. He's treading close to the edge with this, and he's already caused enough trouble. What if Nori can never come home properly? Or something happens to him like it did Lori?

He can't bring home the heir of Thorin Oakenshield. It'll attract trouble, and they can't have any more trouble. “Nobody comes here but me,” Ori says, feeling the clench of guilt in his belly he always gets when he knows he's doing something his siblings wouldn't like. “We could see each other here, for a little while. Until we know if we like one another.” 

Fíli puffs on his pipe, offering it down to Ori again. It smells good, but Ori really doesn't know how to smoke. He should have let Nori teach him. Bad enough he's only seventy, only children don't know how to smoke. He doesn't want to look like a child to Fíli.

“How come you wear a ribbon around your wrist?” Ori had forgotten it, honestly, but now Fíli is playing with it.

“We have a restaurant. The guards like it. They would make jokes about being you when I was working.” It's hard to explain. Dori and Samin always seem to take it in stride, Dori even flirting back to make Adjoa grin. But he doesn't like it. “They never did anything. Don't do much now.” Some look like they might. “Just easier this way.” 

“My mother and father always say I have to be careful, when I'd talk about you. Didn't know who you would be by the time we met. Might not be too fond of the Crown. I used to be obsessed with the mark, when we were travelling. Kíli and I have to travel with Uncle a lot. I used to think about you, hope you were safe at home, wherever your home was.” He exhales smoke. It's already getting dark, the summertime sun not really agreeing with the marked hours inside the mountain. “Could you ever feel me?”

Ori touches Fíli's upper left arm. “You got hurt here a few years ago.” 

“Yeah, I did,” the pipe is on the ground, Fíli's right arm all the way around Ori, holding him almost flush against his chest, so he can cover Ori's hand with his. “Took a knife there. We were attacked.”

“My sister thought you'd broken your arm.” Ori's not sure he likes this story. “What happened to the person who stabbed you?” 

“I killed him.” 

“Oh.” Nori might have killed people. In the last few years, there's been times he's come home bloody, hurt. And he's never been sure just what Lori did for a living. No one talks about it. Probably a bad sign. “Why did they hurt you?” 

“Not everyone is too happy to have a group of Dwarves in their town. And Men tend to do stupid things when they've been sitting in a tavern all night, drinking and working themselves up. The knife was a lucky hit. Only luck he had that night.” 

They're still sitting close. He's almost pulled Ori into his lap. His brothers and sisters wouldn't approve of him sitting like this with any boy, much less a noble, name be damned. So he pulls back, Fíli's arm settling back around his shoulders. “Why do you travel so much?” 

“Work,” Fíli answers. “We need income. Can get more working in Men's settlements, and besides that, Uncle has other responsibilities, tasks he needs me to be present for. It's hard to explain it all, and besides, it's not important. What's it like having such a big family?” 

The subject change is abrupt, and he might not know Fíli, but he knows when someone doesn't want to talk about something. He doesn't want to upset him, not when they've just now found one another. “Crowded. It's always noisy. Everyone is always in one another's business. Especially mine. They always think they know what's best for me and then they tell me.” 

Fíli is chuckling. “You know, maybe we really should just meet here for now. I'm not looking for trouble.” 

The pipe is still on the ground. “That might start a fire.” It was something Nori always warned him about when Ori snuck off here, or to his other places. That fire was dangerous when it wasn't watched, and that if the trees went up around the mountain, the smoke could pour in, choke people, just like it did with the dragon. Dori always said they were lucky to have gotten out. Lots of people in the lower districts had died, because of all the smoke. 

“Damn, forgot it.” Fíli dumps the ashes out and covers them with dirt until the red fades, pressing his boot down on it. “What happened to you eight years ago, or so? I could feel you hurting, but...I couldn't work out what it was.” 

Of course he felt that. If Ori felt his arm, it makes sense Fíli felt that. “My mother died.” 

“I'm sorry,” Fíli says. He tightens the arm around Ori's shoulders. It feels good, feels better than it should to be touched by a stranger. He's Fíli, son of Vimli though. A stranger, but not the same sort of stranger. “I could feel how much that hurt you.” 

There's not much to say about it beyond that. Fíli didn't know her, and Ori doesn't want to talk about her. “Are you going to get in trouble for missing your lessons?” 

“Nothing too bad. Balin will give us an earful, and our mother won't be happy. But our father and Thorin won't be too cross. Thorin's had enough of Balin the past few weeks as well. Dwalin's worse. Thought he was going to take my head off this morning.” Oh, Ori can just bet he's in a foul mood. So far he's been lucky enough to avoid Dwalin's eye in the neighbourhood when the big guard has been around. Being small has never been so useful. 

Frankly, Ori can't see a way out of this mess that doesn't hurt their family somehow. Nori never should have lied. That doesn't mean he's going to tell Fíli any of this though. Ori's secrets are one thing. He's already ruined things for his brother, he won't make it worse. 

“So, if you have your mastery, what do you learn?” The idea of there being _more_ after a mastery isn't something Ori had considered. But he could learn more after? If he could earn decent wages as a scribe, maybe he could put some aside to take more lessons. 

“Boring things, mostly. History. Not the interesting history either, none of the battles or our kingdoms. Family history. Who married who when, who their line was, who their children were and who they married. What their titles and how they're properly addressed, how close they are in the line of succession.” He thumps his head against the wall, and while Ori loves his lessons, even he thinks that sounds rather dull. “Politics. How to be my uncle. Kíli's aren't any better. Mornings are usually training with my uncle, or my mother, or Dwalin. Or all of them. So those aren't much fun either.” 

“Training?”

“They come at me with weapons for a few hours,” Fíli elaborates dryly. “And then they shout at me because I can't defeat three seasoned war veterans. It's not exactly my favourite time of the day.” 

Ori doesn't think it sounds very fun, or very nice. “What's your favourite time of the day, then?”

Fíli looks down at him, serious. “When I'm in the forge. Working. Or when I'm hunting. When I'm playing my fiddle.”

“I can play the pipe, a little,” Ori adds. Nori and Mori are the real musicians in the family, Sori the only one with a real singing voice. Adjoa doesn't have the inclination, but Samin can play the harp. A sign of what little privilege had been in her upbringing. Dori learned the pipe, but he never plays now. Sometimes, Ori still tries, but where his fingers can make the chalk turn into sphinxes and cities and clouds and patterns, they can't make the sounds any better than average. “Do you know _The River Runs Cold_?” 

“Course I do.” His fingers are moving in slow circles through Ori's shirt. “Want me to play it for you?”

Musicians require coin to play a request. Ori's never been bitter over that. He's sat at tables and waited patiently for someone else to request it, someone with money. Baduur had put coins forward once for him, three coppers. He'd wanted Ori to let him past kissing. Ori had, because three coppers had been generous, and he hadn't really minded. 

“I don't have any money.” It's stupid. He's stupid. Because Fíli chuckles, tips his chin up.

“Durin's name, are you real?” 

He kisses Ori on the temple, stands. Finds his fiddle amongst the gear, and runs up and down the scales before the familiar beginning. Ori wraps his arms around his knees, delighted. Being given something like this is new, feels new. 

He doesn't smile when he plays. He's concentrating on the bow, the strings, the whole of it. But he's happy. Ori can tell, can _feel_ it, and it frightens him a little in the best way. He can feel Fíli. Can feel his satisfaction and his effort and his happiness. Ori bites his thumb, overwhelmed. And happy.

Nori is stronger than he ever knew. He walked away from this. Worse, he'd been in front of Dwalin so many times, and never ever said a word. 

The song is almost done, and Ori is _happy_. His brother is gone, his little family scattered just a bit more, and he's happy and he stands up. He comes close, the song stopping, and he cups Fíli's face, kisses him. 

There's nothing wrong with kissing. Kissing is fine. His brothers and sisters might not like it, but they can't protest him _kissing_. Nothing comes from kissing, especially not this sort, these soft, happy kisses. This is his Fíli. He has Ori's name. It's all right to kiss him. 

They're both laughing, smiling, between kisses, Fíli easing down to put his fiddle on the ground gently. He rises back up, his hands on Ori's waist, kissing him over and over. His hands move up, brushing Ori's ribs, his shoulders. His hands on Ori's face are nice. “Hello,” Fíli says, still smiling. It makes his eyes crinkle, his dimples deep, and Ori kisses both of them. “Hello, Ori, son of Cines.” 

Ori is trying not to laugh, trying not to let his smile break his mouth, because he's Fíli, son of Vimli, and he has dimples, and he plays the fiddle and makes jokes and he's the bloody Crown Prince and this is mad. He can feel himself, and he can feel Fíli, and he knows Fíli is feeling the same exact thing. Foam on the top of beer. “We should probably stop, now.”

“Probably.” Probably. But they keep kissing. 

He's so happy it almost hurts. 

His Fíli can play his favourite song. 

“All right, now,” Fíli says, kissing Ori one last time. “We stop now.” Ori nods, but then he steals one more kiss. “All right, no, no, I'm liable to tumble you now you keep that up.”

“My sisters would slit your throat,” Ori replies, a mix of playful and serious. 

“Yeah, so stop.” He still kisses Ori yet one more time. “I don't want my throat slit.” 

Ori ducks down. Fíli's mouth lands on his forehead. “I don't either.”

When Kíli whistles from the tree line, Fíli swears in Common, loudly, glaring at him. “What do you want now?” 

“Ninth bell just rang,” he answers. He's grinning at Ori, like he knows something that's none of his business. Did he see them just now? He had to have. It diminishes the happy feeling, makes it all feel wrong again. 

He said the ninth bell rang. Ori is going to be in so much trouble if they find his room empty. “I need to go home,” he says, finding his things. “I need to get home now before I'm missed. I'm already in trouble, I can't get in any more.” They're already so disappointed in him. Sneaking out won't make things any better at home. 

“No, wait,” Fíli protests, half-following him. “Can't you stay just a little longer?” 

“I'm sorry, I really can't, I still have my chores and I have work in the morning and then my lessons.” With Nori gone, there will be more to do around the house, and more work in the restaurant. He's probably going to have to reduce his lessons to get it all done. 

“Well, when can I see you again?”  
\  
Ori thinks, trying to find a gap in his schedule. “The day after tomorrow, after six?” That's Mori's day to work, not his. “I might take a minute, but I can get here after that.”

Fíli looks at his brother. “Could you cover for me?” 

“Did you finish that job for Glóin?” 

“No, but I can get it done tomorrow if I work late.” 

Kíli shifts his quiver. “Yeah, all right then.” 

“Thanks,” Fíli replies, clapping his brother on the shoulder. 

“I owe you a few any way.” 

“Yeah, you do,” Fíli agrees, turning back to Ori. “Day after tomorrow then, sixth bell. I might be a little late too, so just wait for me. I'll be here before the seventh, at the very least.”

“All right.” Ori wants to kiss him again. He really does and he doesn't know how that makes him feel. 

He turns and leaves instead, because Kíli is here now, and Ori doesn't want to do that in front of him again. He hates that Kíli saw it the first time. That wasn't his business. 

Leaving Fíli, son of Vimli, feels wrong. He should stay. Maybe? He doesn't know. He doesn't really know Fíli, son of Vimli. Hardly knows him at all. Best to go home, get his chores done, and go to lessons and work tomorrow. But he still hugs himself a little on the way home, grinning. He's found Fíli. He's found Fíli, and he's an armourer, imagine that, and a musician and he's tall with dimples and blond hair. 

He's the heir of Thorin Oakenshield.

It's sort of funny. Heir of Thorin Oakenshield himself matched up with him. Sort of funny and sort of frightening. What exactly is he supposed to do with that? How is he supposed to tell his family? 

He doesn't think about it when he walks up the front steps and into the house, not until the commotion starts. Oh, that's right, he was supposed to go back in through the window, wasn't he? “Where in the bloody world have you been?”Adjoa demands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and then the happy turns to grounding


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, because it's a short idea.

They thought he'd gone after Nori. 

“We couldn't even call the guards! We were ready to go to Captain Dwalin for help! Do you have any idea what that would have done to Nori?” Adjoa's been crying. Ori made her cry. “Never do this again, do you hear me? You are to never leave this house without telling one of us where you are going.”

He can't tell if Mori is more furious or afraid, and that makes Ori feel even worse. Mori hates being afraid. “Do you have any idea what Lori's friends _are_? If we'd had to send Dwalin that way, half the river would be in the Tower by morning, including Nori and you, knowing our luck!”

“Not to mention what the other half of the river would do to the rest of us,” Sori adds, shaking her head. 

Ori's not sure he understands. He thought they must be doing something a bit illegal, but they're making it sound quite a bit worse than that. “Is Nori a pirate now?” 

That at least makes Mori snort, and Samin explains, “No, little love, he's not a pirate. Nori is many things, but he doesn't have the stomach for that. Lori, rest her soul, was a smuggler.” When everyone sort of looks at her, she raises her eyebrows disinterestedly. “None of that. He's not a child any more, and it's better he knows when he needs to lie.” No one outright disagrees, so Samin continues. “Lori's mates are a good sort. Respectable. Nori will be safe with them, so don't worry. They all loved Lori, as everyone did, so they'll keep Nori out of trouble, much as anyone can. But you're not to talk about Nori any more, do you understand? If someone asks, you say he's travelling, and that's the end of it. I mean it, that's all you know.” 

“All right,” Ori agrees, knowing better. Samin rarely bosses him about the way everyone else does, so when she does, it's usually for a good reason, not just because she can. “I won't be stupid again, I promise.”

Someone, Sori, wraps her arms around him, kissing the crown of his head, her two long smooth braids falling across his shoulders. “Little love, you were very silly that night, but you're not responsible. We respected Nori's choice, you know, but it was always bound to end up this way. We're only lucky there was so little fuss, and that none of the guards know.”

“But Nori left,” Ori insists.

“Yes, but maybe that's for the best for the time being,” Adjoa admits, even though Dori looks pained. “You know how Nori is. He just needs a little time away, to not feel so pressed in. Lori was the same. She thought best on the water, under the sky.” She reaches behind her without looking, finding Dori's arm and squeezing it. “Nori lied, Ori. Not you. You were very foolish, mind you, and don't think we've forgotten. You have no business drinking spirits, and we had better not hear a thing about it again.” 

A reprimand is better than what he expected. He'd been hoping they'd forgotten that in this. “I'm sorry.”

“And as for this, this sneaking about you seem to be doing, now, we've always allowed you your privacy, let you go off on your own, and we've always been able to trust you. But going out your window without telling anyone where you're off to, as though you have something to hide, that is unacceptable.” Adjoa is looking at her tea, thankfully, because Ori feels his face heat up. Now is most definitely not the time to bring up Fíli, he's sure. Maybe later, when they're not cross with him. 

Dori rubs his mouth. He hasn't sat down yet. “In that vein, we cannot ignore this.”

“But you let Nori -” Ori protests, but stops when both Dori and Adjoa look at him. 

“Nori is an adult. You are not. And he never left this home without telling us where he would be and who he would be with,” Adjoa snaps. “Damn it, Ori, I know you feel like an adult, and you're very close to being one. But you're _not_. You're not yet, and even when you are...you're...” She covers her mouth, her shoulders hitching in a sob. 

“We've sheltered you,” Dori says, finally taking a seat beside his wife at their scrubbed wooden table. “Mother was so much older when you were born. And you were born so early. No one even thought you would live, little love.”

Ori's never heard this, so he listens quietly. He knew she was older when he was born, that he had been something of a shock. But he never heard he was a weak baby. 

“But you did,” Mori says, her eyes surprisingly wet. “You fought. You were so _tiny_ , and you fought so hard. You lived. But you're still little, and you're...little love, you're not as Nori is. Nori can take care of himself, for the most part.” 

“I can take care of myself,” Ori says, hurt by the accusation. 

They don't have to say what they're thinking. He hasn't exactly shown that lately. 

“Am I in trouble?” He hopes not. Maybe they'll just lecture him.

“Yes,” Dori says, sinking Ori's hopes. “You will work at the restaurant after your lessons every day for the next two weeks. And there will be no more sneaking off like this. You will tell us when you leave and who you will be with, and you will be home by the tenth bell, unless you're with one of us.”

That's not fair at all! “I have to work every day? But Mori's supposed to work too!”

“She has a commission coming up. She could use the extra time to get it done.” That's the end of it, as far as they're concerned, and he doesn't want to make his punishment worse by arguing. So he stays quiet, resigning himself to a miserable two weeks. He's starting to hate working there. The older he gets, the worse the guards get.

Adjoa gets him some of what's left of supper, and after he eats, he cleans up the kitchen. By the time the eleventh bell has rung, he's finished his chores and is in bed. Only then does he dare to think about Fíli again. 

He cannot believe he kissed him. He doesn't know Fíli, and he's a prince. A prince! It's absolutely mad, the whole thing. He shouldn't even think about it. He's an apprentice from Tintown, and with all the trouble with Nori and Dwalin happening, he can't risk causing even more trouble. Fíli is trouble. 

But he's already promised to see Fíli again. Wait, no, Dori and Adjoa have him working every day now, he won't be able to see him. Well, he can't just not show. Fíli will think badly of him. And he might get upset. It seems like a bad idea to make the Crown Prince upset. Oh, Durin's name, but he's a prince, and this is just stupid. Ori pulls his quilt over his head, frustrated with the whole world. He doesn't want to work every day, it's never fun. He can't cook, so he's always stuck doing the worst bits, the serving and the cleaning. 

It'd be nice to be able to talk to Nori about this. Nori would know what to do. Or he'd at least keep the secret for Ori, and he'd have someone to share it with. That he's met his Fíli. Kissed him. 

He hopes Nori really is all right, wherever he is. That everyone is right, and Nori just needs some time to himself, time to think. That he's being careful. Ori's heard in Men's settlements that thieves can be horse-whipped, or worse, maimed by having their hand taken. He could even be imprisoned in a Men's settlement. 

Their people don't do well in places like that.

Ori wonders how it was for Nori, speaking to Dwalin after Dwalin knew. He had said Dwalin wouldn't listen, that'd he'd been stubborn. That seems a good fit for Nori, if Ori's honest, no matter what Nori said. All those years of just watching, never saying anything. Ori kissed Fíli today, and they just met. Did Nori stay the night with Dwalin? It's not unreasonable to think. 

What would Nori think of Fíli? Who knows with Nori. 

Why did Dwalin have to be so stubborn about the whole thing? Why couldn't he just listen to Nori? It isn't as though they know one another, and he's arrested Nori even! He's a noble, he's been educated, he can't possibly be so stupid as to think his noble family would welcome Nori with open arms. His brother is even addressed as _Lord Balin_. A known thief marrying in? The gossip would be unbearable. Even if it didn't destroy Dwalin's reputation, Nori would be dragged out into the public eye to be whispered about and laughed at.

The whole idea is stupid. 

So if Dwalin is stupid, what does that make Fíli? He's the stupid Crown Prince, and he thinks he and Ori have a chance. Ori doesn't like the idea of being a joke amongst the city. Poor little scribe from a family such as theirs being lifted out of the slums by the Prince himself. Doesn't that sound like a story that'll get a few additions in every tavern in the settlement? 

Well, maybe he can just meet Fíli a little. Kiss him a bit more. Things might sour between them. They had between his mother and Dori's sire, and he'd been the name on her wrist. It happens, sometimes. Or if it doesn't, Ori can just end things if they start to bind too tightly together. Can't he? He's sure he could. It won't hurt anything. 

As long as Ori doesn't let it go too far. 

He huffs and rolls over on the bed, trying to get comfortable. He can't think straight. His mind keeps going back to Nori, or if not there, Fíli. He wants his brother home. He wants Nori to not have lied. He wants to see Fíli again. He doesn't know what he wants. 

He wants things to go back to how they were. 

Careful not to tug it, he pulls the ribbon around his wrist back a little. _Fíli, son of Vimli_. 

He pulls the blanket over his head, giving in and thinking about Fíli. Kissing him had been nice.

He wishes Nori were here for other reasons too, now rolling onto his back so he can at least look up at the ceiling. Ori's done a little, with the butcher's boy and the guard, and never gone beyond a kiss or two with other boys, silly games really. It's not as though sex is all that hard to work out or anything, but Ori really just doesn't know the finer points, and he wishes he had someone to explain it to him. His sisters are out of the question, of course, and he doesn't think he could ask Dori with a straight face. 

The ceiling needs to be repainted. Some of the stars and designs are fading. He should probably paint the front door first though. The yellow is all faded now, and what if Fíli does get invited to the house one day? Ori doesn't want the door faded and chipped. 

Determined, he closes his eyes, trying to force himself to sleep. This is stupid. He's stupid. He has lessons in the morning, and chores, and work. A full day after a night without sleep is a recipe for misery, and his master is already displeased with him. 

It's stupid, probably, but he still brushes his thumb over the mark and smiles a little.

Groaning to himself, he rolls over onto his belly and grins into his pillow.

♦

The opportunity to get away on the designated day happens unexpectedly. Ori tried to get up to the secret space to leave Fíli a note the day before, but by the time he had finished work and chores and practise, he'd been too tired to try and sneak out.

He's upset that Fíli is going to think badly of him, that he won't see Ori any more. That is, until he wakes up with a sore throat, a cough, and a fever. Mori feels his cheeks with the back of her hand, and shakes her head. “Well, you certainly cannot work today,” she huffs. “Little brat, I was looking forward to a day off.” She says it teasingly, grinning at him as she stands and goes back down the ladder. She comes up with some soup for him before she leaves, and Ori mostly sleeps for the whole of the day. 

The fourth bell wakes him, his skin too tight and damp, the fever gone, but the cough holding on. He goes downstairs to an empty house and has a proper wash, since no one is there to bother him in the kitchen. His brothers and sisters don't mind being naked around one another, but Ori's never been comfortable with it. He likes being alone, washing in peace. 

He changes into clean clothes, choosing what's newest and nicest out of what little he has, and for once, he sits in front of Mori's looking glass as he does his braids. Feeling wrong for it, he reaches in the little wooden jewellery box in Dori and Adjoa's room, hoping to find something nice. He lingers over some pretty clasps and beads until he shuts the box, ashamed of himself. Instead, he takes some of the scrap ribbons from Mori's basket, finding some soft grey ones she'd used for someone's wedding trousseau a few weeks ago. They look nice enough with his hair colour, not quite as red as Nori and their mother's just yet, but getting there, hopefully. 

Hopefully Fíli likes it. Ori leaves after he's scrounged up some food from what they have, and slips a little extra into his bag, just remembering to clean his teeth before he goes. The salt mixture tastes more terrible than usual, and he's forced to nick a mint leaf from the stores just to get the flavour out of his mouth. 

With the door bolted behind him, he pulls his hood up and slips away, as easily as he ever does. The whole way, his heart is beating hard, expecting to be caught at any moment by his siblings or a neighbour, or even Captain Dwalin, knowing his luck. But he makes it up away from the streets and to his little pathway, and out through the trees until he's where he should be.

Fíli is already waiting, and that has Ori's heart beating too hard too. 

“Ribbons,” Fíli says, when he pushes Ori's hood down. He plays with a braid, smiling down at Ori, and his smile still makes Ori feel like his chest is filled with the foam off of beer, or soap bubbles, maybe. “You like ribbons?”

“It's all I have,” Ori confesses, biting his lip before he says, “I almost borrowed something from my older brother and sister, but they wouldn't have let me, so I didn't.” He coughs, unable to keep the itch out of his throat. “Sorry, I've got a bit of a cold.”

Fíli shakes his head, grinning, and ducks down to kiss Ori on the mouth. “I've been thinking about you this whole time,” he says, and Ori is glad to throw his arms around Fíli's neck, drag him down for more kisses. “Hey, wait, hold on...” Fíli draws back. “I have a surprise for you.” 

“What?” Ori asks, confused. “What do you mean?” 

Fíli takes him by the hand and starts to lead him off, away from the spot and into the trees, through them, until Ori sees just what Fíli means. There's a pony tied off to a tree, and Ori stops, tries to draw back into the trees. “Only I saw your drawings of horses, and thought maybe you'd like to meet my girl, and...” he trails off, his expression falling. “Ori?”

The pony throws her head, eyeing Ori with one big brown eye, making noise as she does. Ori can see her teeth behind her lip, the muscle in her broad body shadowed and highlighted in turns by the sunlight dappling through the trees. 

“This is my girl, Ivy,” Fíli says, as the pony turns towards him, nuzzling him. “See the pattern on her flank? Like ivy leaves, right?” 

Ori dares study her flank, and sees what Fíli means. She's that grey colour people call blue, for some reason, but her flank is spotted with pure white, the shapes like ivy leaves on the vine if Ori thinks about it. She's still nuzzling Fíli, turning her great head against his, Fíli laughing as she bites at his clothes. “There now, my lass,” he says, digging in his pocket until he finds a bit of what Ori thinks is carrot. “See? Was worth the walk, wasn't it? All this sweet grass for you, there's a love.” 

Fíli plays with her, but Ori stays by the trees, keeping distance between himself and the beast. Eventually, Fíli frowns, and says, “Come here, come meet her. She's a sweet thing.” Ori shakes his head, frightened to be so close, and Fíli's face falls further. “Do you not like her?” 

He doesn't know what to say, so he settles for the truth. “I've never been near a pony proper, unless it was the ones that pull the trolley.” And those ones have always scared him, with the way they roll their heads and bite at their bits.

“You're frightened,” Fíli says, sounding rather down about it. “I'm sorry, I saw the drawings and thought you'd like her.” He's so disappointed, and that stings. It's what makes Ori come forward, slowly, mind, but forward all the same, until he's behind Fíli's shoulder. Up close, he sees the yellow of Ivy's blunt teeth, the whites of her eyes as she looks Ori up and down until she noses forward, past Fíli, her nostrils widening as she sniffs at Ori clothes. She nips at his bag, and through his fear, he realises she's smelling the food he took. 

Only because he wants Fíli to like him, or maybe because she reminds him a bit of the cat they owned when he was a little thing with the way she begs, he reaches in his bag and pulls out one of the sugared pecan tarts he'd filched from their stores. Fíli covers his hand, pushes Ori's fingers until his palm lies flat, with the tart sitting in the middle, and Ivy nibbles at it for a moment before gobbling it down. Snuffing, apparently approving of him, she pushes at Ori's shoulder with her head, and he scratches her neck, half-trembling while he does. 

“You've got the right end of it,” Fíli says in Ori's ear. “There you are, see? She's sweet, I swear.” She seems to be, even if she is far too big for Ori's comfort, content to be petted and scratched for now. “I'm so sorry, I thought you must like horses. I didn't know you'd be frightened.” 

Ivy keeps nosing at Ori, so he keeps scratching at her neck. “I've never been around ponies. She's so big.” 

“Who, Ivy?” Fíli laughs. “Ivy is just a pony. A horse, like what Men ride, makes her look small.” Ori has no desire to see a horse, in that case. Ivy is more than enough for him for now. “She was a gift from my uncle for my mastery. She stays in the city stables though, so she has company if I can't be with her for awhile.” 

She throws her head unexpectedly, and Ori just manages to keep himself still. He remembers Samin telling him that ponies don't like people moving around them too quickly. “My sister, Samin, she used to ride, when she was little.” Ori shrugs, unthinking as he says, “Not that she could now any way, even if we had the money.” 

Reminding Fíli that he's poor embarrasses him, and worse, he starts coughing again too, enough Fíli offers him a waterskin. His throat hurts enough he takes it, even if his face is red by the time he hands it back. “Should you be out? I could walk you home, if you like.” 

“No, I'm fine,” Ori protests, shaking his head. 

“If you're sure,” Fíli replies, then asks, “What do you mean, she couldn't now any way?” 

“Samin lost one of her legs just at the knee awhile ago. She was working in the mines, and there was an accident. Her leg got pinned, and by the time they cleared the rocks, it was dead, and they had to cut it off.” It's odd to have to tell the story, when everyone in Tintown always knows one another's business. Half the neighbourhood had known before they did. “She works at the restaurant now. The guards like her pies. She's not very good at anything that's not a pie though. It's all right though, because that's usually what the guards want.”

“So,” here Fíli pauses, looking at the ground, then up at Ori again. “Is that the restaurant a married couple named Dori and Adjoa run?” 

“How do you know that?” Ori asks, confused. Fíli had said he'd never been in Tintown. 

Fíli exhales through his teeth, not looking at Ori again. “I, uh, might have asked Dwalin if there was anywhere the guards liked to hang around for meals. I lead up to it, before you worry, and he and everyone else were already drunk. Dori sounded like he might be related to you.” 

“Dori is my eldest brother, and Adjoa is his wife. She's my oldest sister.” Ori tentatively reaches out and pats Ivy's nose. She doesn't seem to mind it. “Why were you asking?” 

“Because you wouldn't have asked about me?” Fíli teases, and that makes Ori smile, even if he blushes a little. “So Dori and Adjoa are the oldest, and they run the restaurant?” 

“Yes,” Ori answers, letting Ivy nuzzle him a bit more. She's almost like a dog, and Ori's never disliked dogs. “Then there's Mori and Samin. Mori is my blood sister, and Samin is her wife, my law-sister. Mori is a seamstress, and Samin used to be a dancer before she was a miner. Now she's a cook. Next is Sori, she's my last sister. She's an armourer. Then Nori is next, he's the second-last. He's in trade.” That's what Ori had decided to say. It's technically true. “Then me. There was another sister, before Dori, Lori. She died when I was really little though.” 

Fíli grins in disbelief. “So your bearer had six children by birth? Damn.” 

“If Lori was still alive, she'd be quite a bit older than me. Dori and Adjoa are old enough to be my parents, if they'd had me very young. If I was darker, people would think I was.” Sometimes, Ori wishes Cines had been black, or at least dark-skinned, because then he could pretend, and it would be easier on him. He gets tired of the jokes about his mother. “I was a bit of surprise, apparently.”

That has Fíli grinning. “So was Kíli. Mother still brings it up when our Father gets on her nerves. Not that she doesn't adore us both, of course...” And now he comes close to Ori, kisses his temple and keeps his mouth there while he says, “Hopefully I'm _your_ favourite.” 

“So far,” Ori teases, smiling down at the ground. “So, you ride her? Ivy?”

“Yeah,” Fíli replies. And he's definitely smiling against Ori's temple. “Want to learn?”

Ori almost says _no_ , but Ivy is still pushing her head against his shoulder, so he says, “Yes.”

Fíli shows Ori what to do first, then gets up in the saddle, extending a hand down to Ori. “Foot in the stirrup, all right?” And with Fíli's help, Ori swings himself up so he's sitting behind Fíli in the saddle. The hard leather isn't exactly comfortable, nor is the wide stance he's forced into over Ivy's broad body, but he likes being pressed up against Fíli's back, and being allowed to wrap his arms around Fíli's waist. It makes up for the nerves, mostly. “Are you settled?”

“I think so,” Ori says, shifting himself a bit closer to Fíli. He feels too high off the ground, mostly, but being close to Fíli makes up for it. 

“All right, hold on,” Fíli says, and Ivy starts to walk, a slow walk that still outpaces Ori's own walk, and he grips Fíli tighter as Ivy speeds up on the grass, until Ori is pressing his face into Fíli's back, nervous and excited and happy, in an odd sort of way. Fíli holds the reins in one hand, and covers Ori's hands with his own. “Should we stop?”

Ori sits up a bit straighter, looking around at what they're passing. He's never seen the trees from this height, or the clear area they're headed into either. Well, he's never properly stood in it. This is where the guards race their ponies, or sit and play dice. They're always drinking, no matter what, and Ori's not stupid enough to wander into a group of drunken idiots. But he doesn't think they'll so much as talk to him if he's with Fíli.

“Does she go faster?” he dares to ask, and feels Fíli's laugh under his hands. He holds Fíli tight as Fíli encourages her into something not quite a gallop, but quite a bit faster than a walk, enough Ori laughs nervously, clutching Fíli tight and hiding against his back for a few moments before he glances up.

The trees are flying by, the grass like water under Ivy's hooves. Ori chokes back another laugh, coughs a bit, then laughs aloud, delighted as he clings to Fíli. No sooner has he, then Fíli spurs her on faster, and now Ivy is really running through the grass, her stout body breathing hard between Ori's legs, but she's stretched her neck out, and Fíli is only bracing himself, not hurting her. She wants to run, doesn't mind them on her back as long as she's running, Ori realises. 

He's enjoying this, even if he's still a bit frightened. His heart is beating far too hard in his chest, but it's not a bad thing, for once. Ori thinks he's happy, and he thinks some of it is Fíli's, and that makes him even happier. He's with _his_ Fíli, pressed against his back, and he's kissed his Fíli, been against his side. 

Ori smiles, and presses harder against Fíli's back. 

Eventually, Ivy slows down to a jog, then a canter and a walk. After she's eased enough, Fíli says over his shoulder, “Keep that up, and your brothers and sisters will be coming for my head.” That makes Ori laugh, even if it scratches his throat, and he sits back a bit while Fíli gently turns Ivy around. “It's fun, right?”

“Maybe,” Ori says, unclenching his fingers from Fíli shirt. They hurt, and he hadn't realized he was gripping him so tight. “Exciting?” 

“The first time I was on a pony, was with my uncle,” Fíli says. “My mother and father are very protective, I can't even describe them, they're so awful about it sometimes. They were convinced that I was still too little. Thorin knew though. He knew I wasn't. He put me in the saddle in front of him, and let me hold the reins. He controlled the speed, because I was learning, but he let me lead.” There's a warm pleasure in the memory that Ori can just barely feel, but it's enough to know just how joyful Fíli had been when it had happened. “After that first time, I couldn't wait to be back in the saddle. I loved riding. Still love it, even if I don't get to do it too much any more.”

“Why not?” 

Fíli huffs. “Work, mostly. I'm needed in the forges more now that I'm a master, and Uncle wants me by his side more often. Wants to make sure I'll know what I'm doing when he's gone.” Under Ori's hands, and against his chest, Fíli seems to tense just a little. “They're all obsessed with dying and me being in charge. They seem to have this strange idea that Ered Luin will burn to the ground within the first week.” 

Ori wants to laugh, but he has to cough instead, careful to do it into the crook of his elbow and not on Fíli. Mori is going to be cross if she sees his good shirt wet, or wrinkled or...or smelling of _horse_. He's going to have to wash these clothes himself, or he can expect the full attention of all four of his sisters on his head as they debate whether or not to tell Dori while quite possibly actually sitting on him. Samin has never been willing to help one way or the other when Mori decides Ori needs bringing down a peg or two, and Sori can go one way or the other. Adjoa won't sit on him, but she'll happily tease him while he's held down and tormented. 

Dori would put a stop to the whole of it, but that would mean he knew everything, and that's still too much to think about.

He misses Nori, even though he's only been gone a few days. Maybe because this time Ori knows his brother won't be home for a long time this time. This isn't a hunt, either of the kind Nori goes on. This is...Lori was a smuggler, and now Nori is too. Poaching and petty theft aren't like smuggling. Smuggling is a real crime. Smuggling earns a law mark the first time, and a bracelet the second. 

For the first time, here, pressed to Fíli's back, he thinks about Nori with a bracelet. He's seen a handful of people with them before. A full branded bracelet around their wrists, the old scarred burn marks swollen and pink with time, hardly reading the correct words any more, but everyone always knew what a bracelet read. 

If Nori gets a bracelet, that'll be the end of everything for their little family. Nori will never get honest trade again in his life, and people will talk. They'll talk about their family, and all of them will be tarred with the same brush. 

Ori will be tarred with the same brush. And Fíli will never be allowed to be with him, to see him. Marry him, if that's where it goes. He'll never be allowed to be with Ori. Ori will be tainted goods. Their marks won't matter. Nothing that goes on between them now will matter if Nori gets a bracelet. Bad enough he has a law mark. A bracelet? A bracelet is unforgivable, unchangeable, unless Nori is willing to let someone press a branding iron into his skin, or worse, spill hot oil and make it look like an accident.

Dori would do it for Nori. None of the rest of them would, but Dori would spill hot oil from the pan on Nori's arm, and Sori would twist it as Nori screamed so the burn went all the way around, and Mori would bandage it. Samin would tell pretty lies to the neighbours. Adjoa would hold Nori through the whole thing, let him cry into her shoulder. And Ori? What could he do?

Boil water. Get clean bandages. Get the bottle of distilled spirits to clean Nori's wounds. Find the aloe Adjoa grows in the pot by the sink. Give Nori the vials of poppy's milk he knows his siblings keep hidden in their mother's old jewellery box. He might not be brave enough to be essential, but he could be helpful.

He's never considered how Nori's crimes could effect him, and now he feels awful for how selfish it is. Nori's done everything but moved the rock under their feet for him and their little family, and Ori is daring to feel ashamed of him? He doesn't have the right, not after what Nori has done for him especially. 

For now, Ori holds onto to Fíli, as Ivy comes back up to where they started.

Fíli helps him down, Ori's legs hurting a bit. “Good?” he asks.

“Good,” Ori says, pulling Fíli in for a kiss.

It doesn't matter, not right this moment. This is what matters. Fíli and him, they matter, for just right now.

Ivy wanders into the grass, while they keep kissing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fíli chapter

Outside his forge, Fíli can hear his uncle and Dwalin, his uncle's voice low and annoyed, Dwalin's rising higher the longer Thorin refuses to engage. Fíli is half Dwalin's age, and he knows better than to think Thorin will engage in something as common as an argument in public. Once they come inside, it will be a different story though. 

True to form, the moment the door is shut, Thorin turns on Dwalin, demanding, “What exactly would you have me do, Dwalin? Send the guards after him?” 

“No one in the Tin Borough has seen him in a fortnight. That's not like him. He never strays far from his family.” This again. Fíli is so tired of this. Dwalin has thought of nothing else lately, has talked of nothing else, and it's working on the last bit of Fíli's patience. “Thorin -”

“Has his family filed a report?” Thorin asks, hanging his sword on the hook. Oh joy. They intend to stay. It isn't as though Fíli is working, or anything. 

He eyes the clockworks. He has three hours until he's supposed to meet Ori, which means he needs to have this done and get himself cleaned up. Showing up smelling like smoke and sweat isn't likely to endear him to Ori. 

Dwalin runs a palm over his shaved head. “No,” he admits. Thorin meets Fíli's eyes, and shakes his head. 

“Promise me you will never be so ridiculous when you find your mark,” Thorin says, turning from Dwalin and pulling a chair over to Fíli's worktable. 

“Why? Will you make Kíli your heir?” That gets a grin out of his uncle, but Dwalin doesn't seem to hear. Fíli's never known Dwalin to act like this. More another uncle than a cousin, Dwalin's always been good-natured, if not a bit surly at times, and he's always appreciated a good laugh. “Thought not. Have no fear, Thorin, I promise to ignore them completely.” He eyes the clockworks. Ori never stays longer than he says he can, which means if Fíli is late, that's time he's lost with Ori, and he has plans tonight. Damn, but why did Ori have to be so bloody young? And have so many damn siblings? “Might I help you two with something?” _Quickly_ , he hopes. 

Dwalin hitches his chin at Thorin in answer, so Fíli focuses on his uncle. Thorin looks decidedly awkward as he says, “Your mother and father wished me to speak with you.”

“About what?” Nothing good, more than likely. 

“About where you've been sneaking off to in the evenings, and afternoons, and once apparently, the very early morning.” Ori hadn't had his lessons that morning, so they'd had two hours or so to sit with one another and talk. Mostly talk. It's not Fíli's fault Ori keeps wrapping his arms around Fíli's neck and encouraging him down for more than talking. “They think you're hiding something.” 

“And if I am? It's none of their concern. I'm an adult, and I no longer live in their house.” Not technically. He does still return for meals, or to spend time with his parents, but for the most part, he sleeps here now, in the apartments above his forge. 

He's thought to invite Ori here once or twice, somewhere they don't have to worry about being seen. But he doubts Ori will come to this neighbourhood. Fíli would go to Tintown, even, if Ori hadn't cautioned against it. 

Thorin huffs. “They worry you're being distracted.”

“From what? My many royal duties?” Fíli chuckles to himself, and switches the magnifying glasses to the stronger one, turning the light up as well. This dagger will supposedly win the heart of this client's beloved, according to her, but Fíli personally feels that if a mark isn't enough to convince said beloved, a decorative dagger isn't going to help much more. Commission is a commission though. “I've been out of the mountain, is all. Exploring. The weather is fine and it helps clear my mind.” 

“I would think you and your brother's minds were empty enough,” Dwalin mutters, handling one of Fíli's hammers. “What Thorin won't say is that your mother and father want you to either return home or join Thorin's residence. They believe you're too young to be living alone, and honestly, even if your uncle won't say, he and I agree.” 

This conversation again. Fíli's bored of it. “I'm of age.”

“Just barely,” Thorin says. “This independence you've so boldly claimed is breaking your father's heart and has your mother in a temper to match any of the Valar.” 

“Mother is always in a temper, and Father always claims we're breaking his heart,” Fíli drawls, unmoved. They're distracting him, and he needs to get this done, or he'll be reduced to a cold wash. “What is so wrong with wanting to live on my own for a time, make my own decisions? You and mother already make most of them for me, at least this way I can decide if I want mutton or rabbit for my supper.” Fíli is lucky to have the resources to be alone, even. Most his age live in the family home or the guild dormitories, only a few able to keep their own shop and their own household. Fíli hardly even has a household, only a Dwarf who comes once a week to tidy and stock the kitchen and another who launders and mends his clothes. “Uncle, have I shirked any duties, any obligations?”

“Not as such.” Fíli doesn't like the look Thorin is giving him, even if he seems to be agreeing. “Where exactly are you venturing outside of the mountain?”

“So you might send a guard to follow me?” When his uncle shrugs, caught, Fíli shakes his head. “Uncle, do not mistake me for Kíli. I don't believe everything you say any more.” His brother is still too trusting of Thorin, even now, when he knows Thorin mostly gives in to their mother's wishes. “I am not doing anything dangerous. There's no need to worry.” Again, he checks the time, but now Thorin notices.

His eyes narrow, but the corner of his mouth quirks. “And will the trees and sky chastise you for being late?” When Fíli's face heats a bit, his uncle smirks. “So it is not just the outdoors you are exploring.” 

Dwalin laughs, lifting the heavy curtain that blocks out most of the sounds and light of the street. “What did I tell you, Thorin? The lad's not being sneaky, he's _in love_.” 

“That's overstating it, a bit,” Fíli says. He's not in love. Not yet. “I'm taking Ivy out today, is all.” He'd planned on it, but he'll have to ask the stable master how the weather is outside the mountain. He doesn't want to take her out in the rain and risk her throwing a shoe, or worse, hurting a leg. “And if I have a sweetheart, what do the pair of you care?” 

Thorin raises an eyebrow, and looks to Dwalin, the pair of them having a silent conversation for a long minute. Fíli gets back to work, concentrating on the delicate set of the rubies in the handle. They're in the pattern of the constellation of the lovers, a choice of Fíli's own. If anything might charm the Dwarf's chosen, maybe something a bit more thoughtful than a standard setting will help. 

He gets quite a bit done, his uncle and Dwalin venturing upstairs and eventually returning with cups of wine for themselves and none for Fíli, annoying him. If they're going to impose, the least they could do is be polite about it. They talk amongst themselves while Fíli works, mostly in Khuzdul and formal signing, which is how Fíli knows he's not to be included. His Khuzdul is more Ered Luin than Ereborian, and the only signing he picked up is common, not what they know. He does understand, for the most part, but it's more an implication of exclusion than an actual barrier. 

In any case, working with the metal keeps him occupied. 

In his prayers to the fire this morning, he had asked for guidance, and his mind goes back to this as he works. Ori is young, just past being too young, and he's from the Tin Borough. There's no way his brothers and sisters will look kindly on Fíli courting Ori. This morning, Fíli had washed his hands and face with the water heated on the fire and combed the oil through his hair with more reverence than usual, before he had knelt on the prayer rug in front of his hearth, bowed and said his prayers. He had asked the Maker for words of wisdom, for advice, on how to proceed with this courtship. 

His right wrist had ached for a time, but the fire had been silent, as it always was. The Maker had offered nothing but that ache, and left Fíli to his own devices. He always did. Maybe if they still held Erebor, the Maker would see fit to speak to Fíli. What would he want with an exiled prince who had never even laid eyes upon his own mountain? He had not allowed them to keep Erebor, had allowed a monster born of fire itself to nest there.

Sometimes, Fíli questions his own faith. Why keep praying when Mahal never answers?

But Mahal had written Ori's name on Fíli's wrist. He has not quite abandoned them. 

Fíli sets the last ruby and sits up straight, stretching his back and checking the time. Just a few more tweaks, and he's done. Then a wash, a change of clothes, and yes, definitely a comb through his hair and he'll finally be back with Ori. 

“Have you forgotten us?” Dwalin's question startles Fíli. He truly had forgotten Thorin and Dwalin. “What has you so lost in thought, princeling? Your work, or the sweetheart?” 

“My work, even if you're both seeking to distract me from it.” He should wear blue today. He looks best in blue. It goes well with his eyes and his hair. Summer means he can get away with shorter sleeves as well, and show off the tattoos on his forearms. Ori is an artist, after all. Maybe he'll even design something for Fíli, one day. 

Wearing his mark's own art in his skin, imagine. 

Thorin is rifling through Fíli's sketches, as he always does, his eye more a critical master's than an overly-involved uncle. “What is this?” he asks, and Fíli just barely manages to not show any outward sign of concern. He knows exactly which sketch Thorin has found.

Last week, he and Ori had been walking along the paths, and Ori had started to gather the lavender blooming with a little pocketknife until he had quite a bit that he had put in his bag. He had explained to Fíli that lavender could be used for a number of things; soap, candles, tea, and biscuits. His family would be grateful for it. Besides, he had joked, their family favoured purple. 

So Fíli had come home to his forge and started to sketch, until he had the image of a locket with flowers, lavender, engraved, while Fíli toyed with one bloom he had kept. He had added statice, in the second sketches, because Ori had gathered that too, explaining that his family often dried the purple blossoms to hang on their door. Then, in the final form, he had added ivy, his own contribution. It would be a beautiful piece, when he made it. A locket, but what to put in it? 

Now Thorin looks it over, and says, “Perhaps you have found inspiration from the outside. You've never worked with flowers before.” 

“The asymmetry is interesting to work with, is all,” Fíli replies, playing at bored. “I think it could be a good speciality display.” He could make two, that is. One for Ori, in the initial design, then a less elaborate one for display. He could place a lock of his hair in Ori's locket, and request a lock in return to set in a ring for himself. He's not one for necklaces, but another ring would suit. Set with amethyst, Ori's hair colour will be very fine. Ori's hair is somewhere between blond and brown and red now, with no telling which will way it go. Amethyst will turn it red. “Careful, I haven't yet copied that.” 

Thorin does, but then he says, “Ivy for fidelity.”

He's not making an idle comment. “What better for a locket?” Fíli asks. 

“You're not yet a century,” Thorin says. “But you are no fool.”

Dwalin is watching them, his pipe between his teeth and his cup of wine in hand. The way he's looking at Fíli tells him just what he and Thorin believe they know about Fíli. Lying is an option, but not a good one. Thorin will be displeased with a lie, and Fíli hates disappointing Thorin. “Ori, son of Cines,” Fíli says aloud, the name familiar. How long has he said that name to himself in the night, shaping the words and praying for just the sight of his face, the sound of his voice? “I found him.” 

The corner of Thorin's mouth turns up, a hint of joy, and not for the first time, Fíli looks at his uncle's wrists. As long as Fíli can remember, his uncle has kept both wrists covered. Vambraces, gauntlets, wrappings, cuffs. Never has he seen the name that should be on one, likely his uncle's right. His right is his dominant. Fíli wonders what the name is, how it's written. Who in the whole of the world could match his uncle? What are they like?

He had wondered who could match him, even. Every now and then, he had figured it was another warrior, but he had usually thought that with disappointment. It was the sensible choice, but it wasn't what he wanted. Seeing Ori, seeing his mark in his too-big jumper and plain braids, with his threadbare satchel over his shoulder and knowing that his Ori had done all the big drawings on the stone walls around them, that his Ori had never seen or held a sword, that he was young and sweet and smiled all the time, had been a weight off Fíli's shoulders. His match is an artist, a scribe leaps and bounds ahead of any of his age if his sums and script practices are anything to go by, brave enough to come to Ivy even when he was scared, and bold enough to ask for a song, to take a kiss. 

Fíli's not in love, but he's on the edge of it, just waiting to fall. He never thought he could feel this way. His heart has always been so closed off to lovers. How was he to know it was because his heart wanted his mark, his one, wanted Ori? A kiss from Ori has his mind alight, wanting a thousand things, some less noble than others. His prayers to the fire this morning had asked about that too, whether or not it was all right to want someone so wholly, to want to be a part of another person so completely. If he was compromising himself as a prince, as a leader, to want to be joined and dependent on another. 

But all that had happened was an ache in his wrist, the same ache he'd had the day Ori's name had written itself across Fíli's wrist. He'd been alone when it happened, coming home from his violin lessons when his wrist burned. An assistant to the confectioner's had taken notice of him, and held him close as he sat on the kerb and cried, because it really had hurt. _“Look at that,”_ she had said cheerfully, a lass not much older than him, _“All over! Ori, son of Cines. Has a musical sound to it! Are you a musician?”_ He'd nodded, miserable and teary-eyed, and she'd hugged him and kissed his temple and walked him home.

Her name was Abena. She ran the confectioner's shop now, and she'd been tickled quartz to learn it was the crown prince she'd held that day. Fíli will never go to another for his sweets, and now he thinks to stop by today and get something for Ori. Abena will laugh when he tells her and better, she'll keep it to herself. Yet better, if he asks, she'll have her own assistants go down to the Tin Borough, find the family 'Ri, and wheedle out what Ori likes. That's an alluring thought, but stupid and deceitful. He'll go by today and take some sugar candy and a variety of whatever else she has in stock. 

“Ori, son of Cines,” Thorin repeats, while Dwalin smirks. “Where'd you find him?”

“He came storming out of the trees, shouting at Kíli and I pointed a sword at him,” Fíli says, and the pair of them laugh at Fíli, Fíli admittedly grinning. He's always been able to take a joke, even those at his own expense. “The moment he said he was Ori though, I knew he was the right one, that he was my Ori.” A dozen or more he's found, but they were never the one he was looking for. “We're just getting to know one another.” 

Thorin and Dwalin laugh at that, but when Fíli just keeps working, they stop. “Nothing?” Dwalin asks. “Is he not interested?”

“Never heard of an uneven match in that respect,” Thorin scoffs. 

“Could happen,” Dwalin argues.

Fíli rolls his eyes. “He's not uninterested,” he says, so they'll stop. “It's just that he's only seventy, and he has six older siblings. He's the baby, and he's hinted they would leave me in a ditch whatever my name is if they felt it necessary.” It makes Thorin grin in sympathy, but Dwalin is frowning. 

“Ori,” Dwalin says. “Know any of those siblings' names?”

He has to think a minute. “I remember Dori and Adjoa...” he frowns. “I think one is Mori...”

“Mori, married to Samin, then Sori, unwed, and youngest but one, Nori,” Dwalin finishes, and Fíli gapes. “What are the chances?” 

“I can't be,” Thorin denies, shaking his head. “Your Nori and his Ori from the same family?” 

“There have been stranger coincidences,” Dwalin replies, sitting heavily. “My name never came up between the pair of you?”

“It did,” Fíli says, an ache growing in his chest. “But he only mentioned you'd arrested his brother a few times, not that there was any other connection.” Ori lied. He looked right at Fíli and _lied_. “Why would he lie?”

“Likely frightened,” Dwalin says. “The circumstances were complicated, and Ori's always been skittish. Practically shakes every time he has to come to the Tower to fetch Nori. Maybe thinks you'll tell me things about the family.” 

“You know more than me.” He's never felt like this. Everything happy about finding Ori feels tainted now, the unexpected betrayal cutting to the quick. “He lied to me. We barely met, and he lied.” And Fíli hadn't even suspected. 

Dwalin inhales loudly, and asks, “Did he tell you where Nori went?” 

It's a betrayal of Ori's trust, but what does it matter? Ori already betrayed Fíli. “He called it trade. Said he worked on the river?” Fíli hadn't much cared, uninterested in anything that wasn't directly related to Ori. 

“He's smuggling,” Thorin says to Dwalin, and Dwalin swears loudly before punching the door frame. 

“Oi, don't be breaking my things up!” Anger he understands, but not mindless smashing of Fíli's shop. “What does it matter if he is?”

“It's stupid, is what it is.” Thorin is shaking his head, but Dwalin's face is drawn and devastated. 

“It's my fault,” Dwalin says, swearing again. “It's my fault. I pushed him, after he refused me, and he ran. It's my fault.” 

“Dwalin -”

“I drove him away from his family, his home, because I wouldn't bloody listen to him. This is my fault. This is all my fault.” 

Fíli looks away, goes back to work. This isn't his business, and besides, he can hardly think about much beyond his own pain. His mark lied to him. He lied. 

Dwalin goes back upstairs, and likely finds another bottle. Whatever teasing had been in Thorin's voice before is gone as he says, “You are my heir, Fíli. I would advise caution with this boy. And no more of this sneaking about. Introduce yourself to his family and bring him here within the month, or I will tell your mother and father.” He's not making a joke, and it wouldn't be funny in any case. Dís and Vimli are difficult to handle in a good situation. 

He's not even sure how he's going to handle this situation. He doesn't like being lied to, not in view of their circumstances. “I will,” he promises, not looking up from his work. 

Today's work is done quickly enough, and Thorin and Dwalin see themselves out when Fíli goes upstairs to wash. Despite his anger, he takes care with his appearance, combing out his hair until it hangs straight and clean, then doing his braids up neatly. He still finds something blue and grey to wear, well aware of how he looks in the colours. 

He still lingers over the cloth-wrapped package. Ori's birthday is soon, and even if he seems unconcerned, Fíli had wanted to give him a present. Now he unwraps it. He'd chosen good fabric, figuring Ori would appreciate it, that it could be made into something by the one sister. The present itself had taken longer than Fíli cared to admit. He hasn't worked with wood as much as metal, but the rosewood had seemed perfect, and the design in the top looked nice. Gillyflower, for their bond. And he had spent maybe an hour agonizing with the clerk over which inks to purchase, which pens, which tips. 

Be a shame for him to not have it. Fíli feels foolish, but he still wraps it back up and ties it off with the ribbon the clerk had provided, then gathers up the rest of the supplies for his plan.

At the confectioner, Abena puts together a mixed bag for him, and even a bit of chocolate when he admits who it's for. She adds a corked bottle of cider too, putting it all together in a bundle for him to put in his bag with the rest. “Bring him by,” she says, with a wink. “Been waiting a long time to meet Ori, son of Cines.”

Fíli smiles back, even if he doesn't quite feel like it just now. 

The stable master tells him the weather isn't good for Ivy, so Fíli only visits with her for a quarter hour, combing out her mane and scratching her neck, talking to her a bit. Not about anything important. He doesn't want to bring her down. The hard sugar he brings her has her nipping at his hair affectionately, nuzzling him and asking for more scratches. “You're my sweet girl,” he tells her, kissing her above the nose and resting their heads together. “You don't lie to me, do you? No, you never lie.” 

She presses her face into his shoulder, until he gives in and gives her the apple he brought. “That's my girl.” She's not happy when he leaves, and truthfully, he hates leaving her, especially when she calls after him. He promises to take her out as soon as the weather improves, for a good long day, but it isn't as though she understands that. 

He would have appreciated her too, as he makes his way to where he and Ori meet. His bag is heavy, and Ivy would have carried it and him easily. Outside, it's damp with the promise of rain, the clouds overheard thick and dark grey. The air is heavy from it, and he hopes it rains long and hard, gets it out of its system. 

Ori is already waiting for him, sitting on an old, patchwork quilt with a sketchpad in his lap. The sight of him is almost enough to drive off the bad feelings, but not quite. “It's going to rain,” he calls, but Ori shrugs. 

“The overhang will protect it,” he says knowledgeably. “What all have you got there?” 

It's easier to empty his bag than talk about what's bothering Fíli. “I've got apples, bread, cheese, some rabbit,” he lays out the items, the cheese and meat wrapped in paper. “Cider, and candy.” When Ori sees it, his face lights up. “Plus this.” He hands Ori the present, pleased at how Ori looks so surprised. “I would have brought Ivy, but it's not safe for her in the rain.” 

“There's a reason Ivy is fat,” Ori teases, and like a change in the wind, Fíli forgets just what he's upset about. 

“She is not,” he defends, even though the stable master has made a few veiled comments about her weight. “She's a little spoiled, is all.” 

“She won't even let anyone else ride her,” Ori reminds him. 

“Not true,” Fíli says. “She lets you.” He hadn't been surprised when she had accepted Fíli boosting Ori up on her back and leading her along. Why wouldn't she? Ori is a part of Fíli, after all, and Ivy knows that.

“That's different.” Ori hasn't unwrapped the gift, seeming to be waiting for a prompt from Fíli. “What is all this for?”

“Your birthday.” That makes Ori colour, and Fíli absolutely has to lean over and kiss him, the present being put aside so Ori can wrap his arms around Fíli's neck. They kiss for too long to be respectable, but neither of them put a stop to it, even with the anger still simmering in the back of his mind. He wants to see Ori's face when he opens the present though, so finally, he gets himself under control and breaks the kiss. “Open it.”

Ori is careful with the fabric, and the way he admires it tells Fíli he made a good choice. Once he sees the box though, he makes a small sound before undoing the latch. It takes a full moment, but then he's smiling, wide and happy, and -

“I can't,” he says, shutting the box, and pushing it away. “I can't accept this.” 

Fíli's heart is somewhere in his stomach. “Why not? I made it for you, I got the inks for you -”

“It's too much. This is too much money, I can't take it.”

“It's not that much for me,” Fíli argues. This isn't what he expected when he picked this out. “I thought you'd love it.” 

“I do,” Ori says, shaking his head. “I really do, but it's too much -”

“No, it's not,” Fíli insists, putting it in Ori's hands. Despite his protests, his hands close around it, and he opens it again, stroking the body of one of the pens. “I don't care where you're from, Ori. It doesn't matter. Mahal put us together, and I'm the heir of Thorin Oakenshield. I want to give you everything I can.” 

Ori takes out one of the glass bottles, holding it up so he can see the colour. It's the red, and even though it's just a bottle of ink, Ori holds it like it's precious. “I...don't know...”

“I'm not taking it back,” Fíli says. “It's yours.”

“Gillyflower,” Ori says aloud, tracing the engraving. 

“Made the box myself,” he brags, just a little. “Took me days to get that carving perfect. You like it?”

“You made it?” Now that the initial reaction has passed, Ori is openly in love with the gift, and Fíli is pleased with himself. “My birthday isn't even for another few days, and it's not even my of-age year. I mean, my family won't even do much.”

Fíli takes his hand and kisses the inside of his wrist. “That's what I'm for. And I might not be able to see you on the day, thanks to your siblings.” He frowns. “What day, exactly?” 

“Mersday,” Ori answers, changing the hold of their hands so he can look at Fíli's tattoos. “These are so pretty. When did you get them?” Fíli is pleased he was right about Ori, and holds both arms out so Ori can push the sleeves back and study them. There's no meaning to them beyond Fíli liking the pattern, but they ended up quite good, the blue-green ink sitting well in Fíli's skin. “How many sessions did they take?”

“Three,” he answers. “And I got them about five years ago. A birthday present from Dwalin. My parents were furious, but they're usually upset with me over something.” Now he remembers why he was upset. “Ori, why did you lie to me about your brother? About Nori? And Dwalin?”

Ori bites his lip, then shrugs. “I didn't lie. You didn't ask.” 

“It was a lie.” Because it was, and this time, Ori sighs. 

“They're complicated, Nori and Dwalin,” he starts to explain, withdrawing from Fíli and bringing his knees to his chest. “Nori is a criminal, like I said. He has a law mark. He's not good at acknowledging bad things either. Nori always tells me that we're going to be all right. No matter what, that's what he says. That we're going to be all right. As long as he can control things, he feels like he can always keep things all right.” Ori plays with a thread on the quilt. “Dwalin makes things not all right. We're barely keeping ourselves off the shale, but we manage. Dwalin makes it hard to manage.”

“But if Dwalin and Nori married...”

“Nori would be the gossip of all you nobs,” Ori says to his knees. “Everyone would talk about him. And they would laugh at him. And Dwalin. They would think Dwalin was a joke. Nobles, they're not like people in Tintown. No one minds us being bastards, or Nori's crimes. It is what it is. But nobles...”

Nobles would make Nori miserable. Fíli not stupid enough to think differently. “So that's why Nori rejected him.” 

“Not just for himself,” Ori says. “You know what they'll say about Dwalin.”

“Yeah.” They'll say Mahal is having a joke on Dwalin, on the line of Durin. They'll say Dwalin is less than the noble soldier he is, they'll say Nori is what he deserves. 

“Nori did what he did to support the family. No, not even that.” Ori's voice breaks. “He did it so I could have a proper education, so we could keep our home when the rent was raised. He did it to pay for our mother's funeral. To pay the healers for Samin's medicine.” He sobs, wiping at his eyes. “He's not evil, or selfish. He did it for us, for me. Wouldn't you do the same for Kíli?”

Fíli nods. Because he would. 

“And more, he's in love with Dwalin. Has been for a long time. It's why he lied. He's just trying to protect him.” The worst part is, it makes sense, enough for Fíli to move over and sit beside Ori, pulling him into his arms. “I don't know how he did it for so many years. I've only just met you, and I can't stay away from you. I'm even sorry I kept something from you, but I shouldn't be.”

“He's your brother,” Fíli says, understanding now, his own hurt feelings superficial and selfish. He had no right to expect Ori to betray his brother for him. “And we're not them, you know.”

“I know.”

Fíli kisses him again, for a few long moments, and then they break so they can finally eat, because he's starved. As it turns out, Ori loves sweets as much as Fíli, but he likes the fresh brown bread and sharp cheese more, and relishes the rabbit. “I could bring some by,” he offers. “Rabbit, and venison, since your brother is gone. Fowl too. I'm a good hunter.” He's not bragging this time. Even Thorin acknowledges that Fíli and Kíli are talented hunters. 

Ori makes a face. “That would mean I'd have to tell them.”

“So tell them,” Fíli says. “You don't have to tell the whole truth. You said no one knew my full name down there. So say you've met me, and that I'm a registered hunter. Bringing game has to win me some favour.” 

“It would,” Ori replies reluctantly. “We've been short on meat without Nori. They'd appreciate it, especially free meat. Nori, see, he sold to the butchers, and then they would give us a special price.” 

“I'll even have it butchered first,” Fíli offers.

“Don't overdo it,” Ori cautions. “You have to visit first, and be very nice. I mean it, Dori and Adjoa are really proper, and they'll expect you to be proper too. You can...um...you should come by on my birthday. Everyone will be home then.”

“So soon?” Suddenly this seems like a bad idea. 

“Yes,” Ori confirms, nodding. “They're already suspicious about where I'm going all the time. This way I'm not lying and they'll see you're nothing to worry about.”

“I'm something to worry about?” He's a little offended. 

“Yes.” Ori isn't joking, and now he's really offended. “I'm the youngest. And you're a noble. They won't trust you at first. Better they don't know until they decide to like you.” That's not terribly reassuring either. Ori seems to know it, because now he says, “Could be a different day?”

“No,” Fíli says. “Let's get it over with. Besides, no one could be as bad as my mother and father.” Now he ducks down, kisses Ori. “Don't even care, not really. I have my own forge, you know.”

“You've said,” Ori says quietly, turning red. “Fíli, um, I haven't...”

Oh. _Oh_. Fíli swears at himself. “I didn't mean it that way. Well, no, I did. But I'm not...I'm not like that? I won't push. If you haven't, that's fine.” It's not, not really. It's frightening. Fíli's never been with someone inexperienced, and he has no idea how to go about things now. Ori's been so eager to kiss, so obviously comfortable with it, Fíli just assumed. “I'd be your first, if we did?”

“Well, if you use a broad term of first,” Ori hedges. “I've done some things, just not all things.” 

“But I'd be your _first_?” Fíli presses, scared. 

Ori nods. “Is that bad?” He hides his face, bright pink beneath his hands. “I knew it was, I was just never very interested in the people offering, and with my siblings...I just...I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be stupid.”

“You're not,” Fíli huffs, kissing him. “You're _not_.” 

“I'm not?” Fíli shakes his head. “Are...are you experienced?” Now he has to nod, embarrassed. He should have been patient, and waited for Ori. “At least one of us knows what we're doing, then. I mean, I don't mind if you've been with someone else. Just means we're not blind.” 

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Ori curls closer, while Fíli eats a sweet. “Thank you for the inks, and the pens. And the fabric.” 

“You're welcome,” Fíli replies, right as the rain starts. “Damn. Do you think it'll let up in time?” He doesn't want Ori to get in trouble. 

“No.” And he comes up, drops himself in Fíli's lap, and kisses him. “I could show you what I know in the meantime, if you like?” 

Fíli gets his hands firmly on Ori's hips. “Just so I've got an idea.”

“Just so you've got an idea,” Ori confirms. 

The rain is loud on the stone of the mountain and the forest. It goes on and on, for hours, a grey curtain between them and the rest of the world outside, shielding them as Fíli holds Ori to him, Ori holding just as tight, the sound of their breathing drowned out by the rain. He finds Ori's mouth, and they kiss, and kiss, their hips moving, trousers undone just enough to make things comfortable. By the time they finish, the storm is rolling, and neither of them can hear anything but the rain and thunder. 

Lightning is still flashing when Ori should be headed home, but he makes no move to leave, just stays against Fíli.


	6. Chapter 6

Ori sits cross-legged on Sori's bed as she leans on her dressing table, her expression an odd mix of confusion, surprise and irritation. He picks at the threads in her quilt, unsure of what else to say. “So, let me be sure I absolutely know everything,” Sori says, still giving Ori that strange look, while he keeps picking at threads. “You found your Fíli. And he's older.” 

“Only by ten years,” Ori interjects, but she holds up a finger.

“And he's a nob. And he pointed a sword at you. And instead of doing the responsible thing, you decided to sneak around with him.” She winces, and mutters something about brothers in Khuzdul, before taking a deep breath and laughing. “Right. So explain to me how it was this seemed like the logical course of action.” 

Ori shrugs, still a bit lost. “I found him the same day Nori left. It seemed like bad timing at first.” He pulls his cardigan tighter around himself, the house chilled without the fire going, even in summer. “Then I just wanted a chance to get to know him a little without all of you in the way.” Sori crosses her arms and raises her pierced eyebrow. Ori mutters to the quilt, “Don't even pretend you don't know what I mean.” 

“Fair point,” she concedes, smiling. “You could have at least told me. I wouldn't be nearly as bad as Mori. You didn't write Nori first, did you?” 

“No, I told you first.” His fourth sister preens, stroking the fine black braids of her beard. Ori rolls his eyes. Mori, Sori and Nori have always been the most competitive of his siblings, Dori and Adjoa above it for the most part, Samin choosing to take no part in their petty squabbles. Ori thinks it has something to do with being in the middle, and maybe even all three of them being so pretty. They really are. Even Ori knows that. “Do you remember when you and Mori and Nori fought over that old dress of Mother's?” 

It had been a set, actually. An embroidered skirt and blouse, with a belt and jacket and head scarf, a very pretty set their mother had been given as a gift from Sori's sire. She'd claimed she was too fat to fit any of it any more, what with having three babies after it was made. So she had first offered it to Dori and Adjoa, but Dori was too broad and uninterested in skirts, and Adjoa too tall and an entirely different fit from their mother. Ori had been little enough to be more interested in his old toy horse than pretty clothes, but he'd liked watching his sisters try it on. Mori and Sori had been both been a bit too tall for both pieces, the tattoos on Mori's belly showing, and Samin a bit too short, but they'd liked playing dress-up until Nori decided he wanted to try it on. With his hair colour and his height and build, it had fit him well, and he'd called himself prettier than all the rest, until the lot of them had been shouting loud enough to give their mother cause to raise her voice. Ori had watched from the side, his toy in hand, and now, he remembers watching his pretty siblings and wondering if he'd be pretty too.

Sori smirks, jarring him. “I won, is what I remember.” She had, but maybe that was because Jin was her sire, not Mori or Nori's, and Mama thought she had more right to it.

She's looking through the drawers of her old wardrobe, the soft paper she keeps everything separated with crinkling until she finds the familiar, long, embroidered head scarf. “Here, let's see how it looks on you now that you're old enough to wear it.” She helps him wrap it properly, Ori never having cause to wear such a vain thing, then shows him how it suits in her hand mirror, another hand-me-down from their mother, and another gift from Sori's sire. Jin had been generous, and very in love with their mother for a time.

His sister looks at him, until his face heats, and he asks, “What?”

“I just forget you're not a little thing any more, is all,” she says, adjusting the scarf. “It's why we worry, you know. You're old enough for people to take notice of you for more than just a kiss and a cuddle, and I hate to say it, but they are taking notice.”

“I hate to say it too,” Ori grumbles, embarrassed, admiring the pretty scarf any way. It was his mother's, after all, and when he raises up the end and inhales, it still smells a bit like the scent she had worn when she had occasion to. “I'm not even that pretty, not like the rest of you.” 

“No, but you might be when you get a bit older.” Sori keeps adjusting the scarf. “You, my darling baby brother, have the unfortunate trait of being very sweet-looking, even if you're not as pretty as us just yet.” She huffs at him, and goes back into the drawer. “It might even be a relief to Dori and Adjoa if you have a noble tied to you, little love. They've been worried about things, with Nori gone. If this Fíli marries you, or at least courts you openly for the time being, the slobbering dogs we cater to will keep their hands to themselves.” 

What a relief that would be.

The paper crinkles and tears, and Sori swears. “What kind of noble is he, any way?”

Ori is glad she isn't looking at him. “I don't know, exactly.” He's rather sure if he did say, no guard would ever so much as look at him again. “Do you miss Mama?” He can remember her scent clearly now, cooking and the fire, a touch of her soap. It almost makes him tear up, but he fights it until it stops. She wouldn't have liked them crying over her. 

His sister falters for only a moment, then shrugs. “She wouldn't have wanted us to miss her much. I got all my crying out in the first year, in any case.” The drawer shuts loudly and she holds up a shirt Ori hasn't seen on her in an age. It's lavender, the embroidery a blue that hasn't faded. “This'll fit you better than me, now. My breasts got too big for it. Shows my belly now, and I'm not piercing my navel or getting my midsection tattooed, so I cannot wear it without being looked at funny any more.” 

“You should just get one or the other already,” Ori says, the same thing all their siblings say, laying the headscarf aside before he yanks his shirt over his head and tries the new one on. It fits well enough, and it looks much nicer than anything else he owns. “You think he'll like it?” 

“Oh, so now you're worrying about how he sees you?” she teases, grabbing him around the middle and holding him against her. There's a fogged looking glass in the door of the wardrobe, still clear enough they can see themselves against one another. 

He wishes he wasn't so pale, for the thousandth time, if only because it reminds him of Cines. Their mother had not been an especially pale Dwarf, but Cines is. He only hopes his hair doesn't darken to Cines' colour. He doesn't want to look like them. He wants to look like Sori, or Mori. 

The shirt does look nice on him, he admits, with his in-between hair colour. “Is he nice?” Sori asks.

Ori nods, trying to focus on happier things. “He gave me a birthday present. And he's a hunter, he offered to bring us game.” 

“Did he?” she teases, pressing their cheeks together, their skin not quite matched, but both pale. “How exactly have you two been getting to know one another, now?”

“Shut it!” Ori shouts, giggling despite himself, and Sori kisses him noisily on his cheek twice, holding him close to her, enough he can feel her heavy bones and muscle.

Sori whistles. “Oh, so there was a bit more than a kiss and a cuddle!” He tries to escape, but he's the smallest still, and she gets a good hold on him, keeping him there. “He any good?”

The sound he makes is entirely too high-pitched to be dignified, half a laugh, half choking. “Mind your own, you nosey bat,” he says, but Sori doesn't release him, rocking them back and forth from foot to foot in an exaggerated way. Giving in, he smiles into her arm and admits, “He gave me a box of inks, and two pens and five nibs. And he made the box himself, out of...rosewood? That's what he said. He engraved a gillyflower in the lid too, and all this pretty knotwork on the corners.”

His sister frowns in the looking glass, her good mood swept away. “That's a very expensive gift, isn't it?”

“Not that expensive,” Ori says quietly, lying. 

“But _expensive_ ,” she says, her fine black eyebrows drawn down. “Just what kind of noble is this bloke?”

“He's an armourer, like you,” Ori says avoiding the question. “But he's a really good hunter too.” He doesn't doubt Fíli sells the furs and meat to supplement his income, so he's not lying. “I think you'll like him, really.” 

“Well, seeing as he's your mark, I had better,” she grumbles, the suspicion seemingly washed away and forgotten. “Imagine us being stuck with someone we didn't like. It'd be awful.” But then she bitterly adds, “Suppose the pair of you wouldn't live here any way though. You'd live in some pretty town house in a neighbourhood so far away you'll need a trolley to come see us, if you remember.”

Ori lets her finish, because Sori likes to rant without interruption. “Sori, I'm seventy. I'm not even allowed to be engaged, much less married.” 

“Seventy-one before the week is out,” she replies. “Four years will fly by, and you two will at least have an agreement.” She releases him, and digs in her jewellery box. “I was going to give you this on your birthday, but this way you can wear it for dinner.” She holds out a silver hair clasp, with a complicated geometric design of triangles. “It was Jin's. He gave it to me after him and Mother went their own ways.” 

Jin always brings presents for them all whenever he comes around, but usually it's fabric for clothes, or thread, or once, a whole case of buttons. When Ori was little, he usually brought him a toy or sweets from whatever distant place he had been last. A hair clasp though, that had been reserved for their mother. When Ori was little, he thought maybe Jin still loved her. 

“But he's your sire,” Ori protests, even as he lets her change his hair. “Won't Jin mind?”

“No,” she says, her lips pursed in her reflection as she brushes out Ori's braids. “Jin knows Cines, remember? He won't mind filling in a little more.” Jin never did like Cines. Ori at least knows that. He's not so young and silly to think Jin still loved Glori, but he did respect her. Cines hadn't, and Jin had known it. Jin is not as warm as Spyros is, but he loves them all in his way. He loves Ori better than Cines ever did, enough to bring Ori a toy horse from a land Ori can only ever imagine. 

Sori finishes and the clip does look nice. He likes how it looks when one of them bullies him into being their doll. “Have you heard from Cines? Are they coming to visit for your birthday?” 

“Is it an important one?” Ori asks, not inclined to be nice.

“No,” Sori answers, rolling her eyes. “I never did know what Mama saw in them. Cines was so frightened of us they hardly spoke to any of us. I suppose she was lonely. It was right when Lori started going to sea. Mama missed her so much.” She adjusts his hair one last time, and goes back into her wardrobe. “Do you remember Lori at all?” 

Ori sits on her bed again, struggling for a memory but not wanting to lie. “I think so. Sometimes, I think I remember her singing, or her face.” 

His sister isn't doing much of anything in her wardrobe. “It _was_ an accident you know.” Ori stays quiet, because they don't talk about Lori. “It was dark, during the spring. The river was flooded, the current was strong. The icemelt was cold. The guards raided the boat. They weren't really intending to hurt anyone, just seize the hold and arrest the lot of them. Lori was a lot like Mori and Nori though. She fought back and her mates said she fell overboard. Guard didn't even mean to do it. The guards and the crew found her downstream.” Sori still isn't looking at him. “Body got caught on some rocks.” 

With his knees pulled up to his chest, he closes his eyes, and tries to _remember_. But even if it is her face he's remembering, she's a blur. “I wish she'd had her portrait done.”

“So do I. Or that I had your talent, so I could draw her now.” She finally turns around, crossing her arms over her chest. “She was very pretty, of course. But she wasn't interested in that sort of thing. Disappointed Mother. She wanted grandchildren. When it turned out Lori and her mark were matched that way though, Mama accepted it.”

“Who was Lori's mark?” Ori asks, curious. He hasn't known that Lori knew her mark. No one ever said much about Lori. 

“Lad named Dian. They were content with one another, matched as they were.” 

Ori thinks a moment, and asks, “So why doesn't Dian come around?”

Sori's expression is grim enough he wishes he'd kept his questions to himself. “After he lost Lori, he wasn't well. He ended it himself about half a year later.” She sits beside him on the bed. “We weren't really surprised. It was what it was, and his family had started to pressure him to continue the line. Wasn't right of them, but they blamed themselves enough for everyone.” 

For a second, Ori wonders about losing Fíli that way, but the clench of pain in his chest stops him from entertaining it further. “Did you ever want to, because of Seung?”

“Our bond was never completed. I feel his loss, but not the way I would if I was like Dori and Adjoa, or Mori and Samin. Even Nori and Dwalin. And I think Dian had more hurts than just Lori's loss.” They sit in silence for a few minutes, Ori guilty over not feeling the deaths of Lori and Dian as deeply as he knew he should, but trying to pretend for Sori's sake. It was hard to miss someone he never knew. 

The moment passes eventually, thankfully. His sister bumps her shoulder against his and tugs on his braids affectionately. “I promise I'm not going to leave your Fíli alone with Mori.”

“Thank you,” Ori laughs, genuinely relieved. 

“I better be your favourite,” she says. “You and a noble, imagine. Mori got Samin, Nori got Dwalin, and now you too. Mother always said we couldn't all be so pretty for nothing. Maybe yours is richer than Dwalin, and you can buy us a nicer house after you're married for a time. Or I could work in a real forge, not Little Zan's place.” 

Little Zan's smithy was known for good work with the sorts of things that could be slipped up sleeves or in boots or hidden in braids. It got decent trade, but Sori had become uncomfortable there in the past few years. Ori never minded bringing her dinner, or anything. It wasn't that sort of place. If Sori could get other work, she would. But their family is what it is, and Tintown is what is, but even the people here have a hard time overlooking Glori, with six children borne and only one by her mark, and not even the first babe. Because Lori was the oldest, and Dori's sire had been her mark. 

Ori keeps quiet. He's not old enough to have any say in where Sori works or who she works with. Little Zan is better than most, in any case. Better than Mama Cho's place, two streets over. Better pay, but more risk, and one sibling in the Tower is enough for the family. “Maybe,” he says. 

The box of inks and pens had been expensive, he knows that much. Very expensive. He still feels a bit guilty over even accepting it, and hasn't shown Mori the fabric yet, not wanting to listen to her teasing about Fíli, or worse, her questions. It's very good fabric. If Fíli brings game when he comes though, that should incline her towards him. His sisters are never reluctant to accept gifts, even Adjoa. Nori's not too selfless in that respect either. Gifts are gifts, regardless of why they're given.

But this is the first time he's ever had a gift of such expense given to him, ink of his own. Not just black either. Fíli had bought colours too. And pens! Ori's never been allowed to even hold a pen outside of his master's studio, and even then, not often. He'd spent every day since just holding them and enjoying the novelty of, unable to stop himself from smiling every time he remembered they were _his_ , his to keep forever. 

“Will you help me tell Dori and Adjoa?” 

“I suppose we do have to tell them at least before he shows for your birthday.” She inhales through her teeth, then works at the one silver one with her tongue through her cheek. “They'll not be pleased though. Maybe they'll be more polite if they just meet him without a chance to make assumptions. And they cannot exactly be rude if he's already here.” Sori frowns in thought, Ori anxious for her solution. His sisters and brothers have always been more clever than him, and he knows they usually know better. “We'll tell Adjoa. Dori is not in any mood to hear about romance after Nori, but Adjoa's a softer touch. And they're both saps for you.” 

Ori shrugs to that. It's not his fault he's the youngest, and from his viewpoint, there's more downsides than benefits. 

“If me or Mori or Nori had pulled what you did, disappearing that day, we would have been confined to the house for three months, and gotten lectured every other day.” Sori's looking at him in that way of hers and Mori's and even Nori's. Condescending, but not quite. Derisive, that's the word he's looking for. 

“What about when Mori was sneaking Samin into the house?” Ori had been little, but not blind. He just hadn't known what it meant until he was older, of course, but still. 

Sori starts. “You knew?”

“I was twenty, not stupid.” 

“Dori and Adjoa are heavy sleepers, and Mama was a little deaf by then,” Sori excuses. “And if you ever tell Dori and Adjoa, Mori will skin you alive before Dori can even switch back to Common,” she warns him. “Adjoa will think it's very sweet, your Fíli. You're her baby, after all.” 

“Am not!”

“Are too,” she insists, in her obnoxious way. 

“Am _not_ ,” he whines loudly, until she tackles him to the bed, using her superior weight to pin him, and tickle him mercilessly, saying, “Are too!” over and over until he breaks and begs her to stop. 

By the time they're both feeling more serious, Adjoa and Dori are home. They wait, under Sori's advice, until Adjoa is taking a bath in the kitchen, the big bathtub that they usually keep covered with a counter full to the top of steaming, scented water. When they come in, Sori sliding the kitchen door shut behind them, she lifts the cloth off her eyes. “Hello, loves,” she says, dropping it again. “I feel as though I haven't seen either of you in an age. Come sit with me.”

The kitchen is hot from the heat of the bath and the fire, enough Ori can feel the beginnings of damp on the back of his neck. They must be quiet for too long, because Adjoa huffs and asks, “Which one of you did what?”

“Sorry, did we suddenly change into Mori or Nori?” Sori asks, taking a seat by the tub now. “Bad day?”

“Long day,” she groans, sinking down further into the water. Her tight braids are under a wrap, keeping them out of the water for now, but Sori takes some down and starts to undo them. Ori picks up on the hint and starts on the other side, his back to the hearth. “Not long enough I don't know you want something, but do carry on. I've needed a proper wash for a week now.” Adjoa's coarse hair needs less washing then Ori's, but it does still need it, and even if he wasn't trying to win favour, he doesn't mind helping when she asks. Her dozens of tiny braids can take hours to care for, and usually her back hurts too much to bother. Mori wears her hair out or in multiple thick double twists, so Samin can usually help her fine without their help. “Out with it. What's happened?”

Sori meets Ori's eyes, and he shakes his head, too nervous. She scowls at him, but Ori looks down at Adjoa's braids instead. “Oh _fine_ ,” Sori says. “Ori met his Fíli and he's been sneaking around behind our backs meeting him.” 

Adjoa sinks to almost her nose, her eyes squeezed shut for a moment, then her shoulders relax and she rises up again. “Ori, if you know what is good for you, you are going to pour me a glass of wine. _Now_.” 

“Yes, Adjoa,” he says, springing up to do just that. He finds the sweet red she likes, and pours more than is a proper glass in one of the few good glasses they own. “We haven't done anything improper.” It's only a little lie, really so it hardly counts. “I just wanted to know him on my own, without everyone trying to get involved.”

She eyes him over her glass, taking a long sip. “How long?”

He squirms under her gaze. “The day Nori left and I went off. He was in one of the places I draw.” 

“How romantic,” she drawls, taking another long sip. “I was not forged for this nonsense. Why can none of you be normal? Dori and I met in a shop, like other normal people.” She stops, and looks over at Sori. Sori is concentrating on Adjoa's braids, but her expression is stiff. “I'm so sorry, darling. I didn't mean anything by it.”

Sori shakes her head. “It's fine.”

“My love...”

“It's fine.” 

They both know Sori well enough to know when to drop a subject, so they do, Adjoa turning her concentration back on Ori. “So who is your Fíli? Tinker, tailor, chandler?”

“Armourer,” Ori answers. “And a noble.” 

“And now I see where this conversation is going,” Adjoa says, finishing her wine and holding the glass out for Ori to refill. “Quickly now, get me drunk and agreeable before you tell me what else is wrong.”

Ori waits until she's finished her second glass, patiently working on undoing her braids. She's done by the time Ori has gotten through a good section, and he refills it a little before he says, “He's ten years older than me.” 

His oldest sister swears in Khuzdul. “Of course he is.” 

“He's very nice. He gave me a birthday present,” Ori tries, desperate for her approval, or at least her alliance. “Inks and pens.” He leaves off everything else. He's been so careful to keep everything private, even washing his own clothes where usually Mori did it so she wouldn't smell horse. Fíli has been eager to share Ivy, and after the initial fear, Ori likes her very much too. So far, he can ride her by himself as long as Fíli is leading her, and she likes when he brings her the scraps from the vegetables of the day, or picks some things for her. A noble with a pony starts to look suspicious though, and Dori and Adjoa aren't like Sori or Mori. They can put pieces together that Ori didn't even know were on the table. “You'll like him, when you meet him.”

“And when will that be?”

Ori tries to meet Sori's eyes, but now she's the one purposefully concentrating on Adjoa's hair. “I invited him to visit on my birthday.” 

His oldest sister shakes her head. “Sometimes I regret marrying into this family.” She tweaks Ori's cheek. “You're lucky you're so sweet-looking, little love.” The wine is starting to go to her head, which is likely for the best. “So what have you two cooked up?”

“It's only that Dori cannot refuse if Fíli is already in the house,” Sori points out.

“And he probably will if we tell him ahead of time after everything that's gone on with Nori and Dwalin. He's been so upset over it, and with Fíli being older, and a noble, I don't think he's going to be very open to Fíli unless he _meets_ him.” He's sure Dori will like Fíli. He just has to. 

“I like it better when the lot of you are fighting instead of forming alliances.” Adjoa hands over her empty glass and Ori takes it to wash and put aside to dry. He doesn't want her to have a headache in the morning, because then she'll be upset with them and change her mind. “Do you like him so much you're willing to take such a risk?” 

Ori shrugs. “He's my mark. Of course I like him.” 

“It's not always that simple, and you know it.” Adjoa leans forward so Sori can wash her back. “Ten years older, then, and a noble. I assume he's very charming. That age always is.” She's looking at Ori through her braids, and eyebrow raised. “I'm not comfortable with the idea you've been sneaking around with him. Nothing's happened? Nothing at all?”

He's offended enough not to lie. “Nothing I didn't start.” 

Sori snickers, but Adjoa groans. “This is ridiculous.” Ori goes back to undoing her braids, the hearth high enough he can sit on it and reach her hair instead of kneeling on the stone floor. “How are you even finding time?”

“I go after my lessons when it's not my day to work, or in the mornings when I don't have lessons. I get up early so I can get my chores done.” Not very well, if he's honest, but no one's looking too closely any way most of the time. He's been able to repaint the door at least. “It's nice.” He combs his fingers through Adjoa's loose hair, making sure he hasn't missed anything. “All right, are you ready?” She nods, and he dips the pitcher in the water, pouring it over her head several times while Sori runs the comb through to make sure they get it all. Sori handles the washing, and Ori handles the rinsing, until she's ready to get out. 

Once she's sitting in a kitchen chair, Sori sits on the table behind her and begins the long task of working oil through Adjoa's hair. Ori makes sure the floor drain is uncovered, and then pulls out the stopper so the water all pours down. After that, he cleans and dries the inside of the tub and pulls the wooden cover on, followed by the counter that he locks into place. Then he reaches underneath and puts the tight seal over the drain, so nothing nasty crawls up from the waterways. By the time he's done, Sori has started working on Adjoa's braids. Ori helps by handing her beads when she works her way to the bottom, and holding hair back when she's working in a corner. 

“Do you really think Dori is going to be so harsh?” Adjoa asks, when Sori is about halfway through. “You've never been untrustworthy with a boy before. A bit silly, granted, with the butcher's boy. But better with that guard.” Ori doesn't bother asking how she knows about the butcher's boy. “We never felt we had to watch you the way we had to watch Mori and Nori.”

“I don't even get a mention?” Sori asks, pulling the comb through Adjoa's hair one last time. “I could have been up to no good.” Even Ori makes a face at her at that. “Brat,” she says, flicking water from the pitcher at him. 

“Play nice,” Adjoa reminds them. “Fine, have it your way. He can come to supper, but he had better be on his best behaviour. And no weapons in the house, I know how those nobs are. We have too many for my taste already.” Ori nods readily, sure he can convince Fíli to leave his two swords at home. “How are your lessons going, love?” 

Ori doesn't know what to say to that. His master has been no better or worse since the last time Adjoa asked, but she hasn't shouted at him in awhile, so that's something. “I'll be able to finish my apprenticeship in two years, if I manage to present a mastery that passes the approval of the Scribes Guild.” Two years feels like very little time, but he doesn't know he can stretch it out much further. Two years from now, he'll be seventy-three, the youngest age an apprentice can be pushed out of the master's tutelage. He'll either have to present, or find a new master, and they can hardly afford her. “I'll have to start drafting now. I think I could do an accurate anthology of herbs. It could pass, I think.” Or rather hopes. With Fíli's gift though, it could be in colour, and Ori has a good hand for mixing. He could be very accurate. 

“That old troll will try to push you out before that, if I had to guess,” Sori says, sinking Ori's hopes. He has two more years to stay beneath her notice, as well as finish his presentation. If she ends his lessons before then, it'll be years of work and money wasted. No one will take on an apprentice that another cancelled. “There has to be a way we can earn more money, get you a different master, or find someone who will take you in on scholarship.” 

“We need better friends than the ones we have.” Adjoa tilts her head for Sori. “The protection is nice, but if a one of them is interested in any book that doesn't have a row of numbers beside names, I'd be surprised. Not exactly the scholarly sort. Even Lori had to be forced through lessons, and you remember how Nori was?”

“Only because he can never sit still.” Sori is almost done, her fingers quicker than Ori's. “Do you want me to get some incense for the restaurant when I get some for Ori's birthday?” 

“No, we'll just burn some herb bundles. They keep the scent longer, and Ori has gathered a fair amount over the past few weeks.” She points at the ceiling, where all the herbs Ori has been cutting when he thinks too are drying. “Cut as much as you can find, Ori, and bring us some sweet grass as well if you go down by the water. That burns nicely. But mind yourself if you do.” 

“I will,” he promises, reminding himself to take a basket tomorrow to fill. He's not meeting Fíli tomorrow, but it's not his day to work either, so he'll have the whole afternoon to cut and gather. “Do you think maybe something would grow in here? In the mountain?” Maybe the light from a lamp would be enough, since they live completely beneath the rock. 

“No, they need sunlight. Nothing will grow inside but moss.” Adjoa had been apprenticed to a herbalist before she met Dori, and had even become a master, but her talent had lain more in cooking than healing, just as Dori's did. “Could start a lovely little moss garden on the roof, if you like. You're old enough you could care for one.” 

“Really?” Ori asks hopefully. Some of their neighbours have green roofs, but they don't. Ori's window would give him perfect access too. 

“You'd have to haul the gravel and the dirt for the base in yourself, and take care of it, but I don't see the harm. Worst you can do is make a mess, and it's only the roof. Better a mess of moss than bats.” Sori's all done now, and she gathers Adjoa's braids up in a big twist for her, wrapping the scarf around her hairline and pinning it in place. “I'm for bed now, loves,” she says, standing. Outside, the time sounds as the tenth hour of the evening, which means Ori and Sori should be headed up as well. “Good night,” Adjoa kisses both their temples. 

“Good night,” they echo. 

When they hear her in the hallway above, Sori pours herself a glass of the wine as well, offering Ori some. He shakes his head. He hasn't had anything stronger than cider since what happened with Dwalin, not trusting himself any more, especially with another secret heavy in his heart. 

But he sits up with her any way, so she doesn't get lonely, and brushes out her braids when she asks.

♦

Getting to the Tin Borough is easy enough on its own. Fíli simply takes the trolley in, but once he's there, things are less easy. The streets are packed tight together, homes almost on top of one another, little shops and restaurants and forges scattered throughout. They give him a wide berth, eyeing his swords. He hadn't thought about what they would look like down here, only that he looked very impressive in the looking glass with both of them on.

He feels a bit like a prat now, more so when he realises he cannot tell what street he is on or the house numbers. He thinks he's mostly in the correct area, but there's no hint towards which home is which, and the street is not straight either. There are more houses tucked in alleys, some split into two or three even. 

Two Dwarves are sitting on a front step, smoking and watching the people pass. Fíli risks approaching them, their looks friendly enough, and asks, “I'm afraid I've gotten a bit turned around.”

“We can tell,” one replies, getting a chuckle from their companion. “Who you looking for, then?”

“Ori, son of Cines?” 

The other one frowns. “Glori's youngest?” They seem to be asking their friend, not Fíli. 

“Is Cines his sire? I thought Spyros was.”

“No, Spyros is Nori's sire,” the one corrects. “Remember?” 

“I doubt Glori remembered,” the other scoffs, and they both have themselves a laugh before one bites on their pipe and the other leans over, their own pipe held between their fingers. It has the bitter smell of something cheap, or maybe simply stronger than pipeweed alone. “You're not too lost. Their house is third from the end on the right, with the yellow door.” 

“Thank you,” Fíli says, nodding his head to them. Walking away though, he hears one say to the other, “What's a nob doing looking for that runt?” and the other reply, “With Nori gone, might need a bit more income. And he's got a sweet look to him.” The implication makes Fíli put a hand on his right sword, giving them a warning glance over his shoulder. They both stiffen a bit, one's lip curling, and they don't say anything else until Fíli is out of earshot. 

He finds the yellow door, tucked a little away from the street, the house old stone, with a plain stone roof. There's no door knocker, so he just raps his knuckles on the door. There are windows, with tatted lace curtains. He knocks again, louder, and the door is thrown open, startling him. A dark-skinned Dwarf with light eyes and long, black braids hanging to almost her knees, is glaring at him. She looks him up and down, and sneers. “What do you want?”

“I'm here to see Ori,” Fíli hazards, confused. “Is he here?”

She rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning against the door frame. “Why?”

Fíli feels a bit wrong-footed. Maybe he should have dressed somewhat less...less. “Because he invited me. For his birthday.” 

“Did he?” She doesn't seem very interested. “Why?”

“Because I'm Fíli, son of Vimli,” Fíli retorts defensively. “Is he here, or isn't he?” 

“Word of advice, being rude isn't endearing, nob,” she drawls, still not moving from the door. 

“Word of advice, getting in my way isn't smart,” Fíli snaps before thinking.

Her eyebrows go up to her hairline practically. “Off our step, nob, before I take one of those swords and shove it -”

Behind her, Ori appears at last, grabbing her arm and moving her aside. “Go away,” he hisses to her. 

“Make me,” she hisses back, even as he shoves at her. She puts her shoulder into it, and she's bigger than Ori. “Look at him, he's a total nob, you must be joking -”

“Just go away!” Ori shoves her with all his strength, it looks like, but it doesn't seem to help. The other Dwarf just puts her weight down further on Ori. “Mori, I mean it, go away! Don't you have anything better to do?” 

“Don't you have any shame?” the other Dwarf asks. 

Ori finally gets her moving, her making faces at him, him making one back. “I'm going to tell Dori!”

“'I'm going to tell Dori',” she mocks, still resisting.

“ _Mori_ ,” he begs, and finally, she stands straight and moves aside so Ori can step out. Ori starts to shut the door, but barely has his hand on the knob before Mori asks, “And just what do you think you're doing?”

“Mind your own business,” Ori says, shutting the door firmly. 

“One of your sisters?” Fíli asks, a bit more intimidated than he'd like to admit. 

“Mori, my second sister,” Ori reminds him. “She's married to Samin, my third sister.” 

Fíli screws his eyes shut, struggling. “Then Sori, your fourth sister, and Nori, your second brother.” Far too many names without much variation. “Why do you have so many siblings?” 

“You wore your swords, no, I meant to tell you not to do that,” Ori groans. “Adjoa hates weapons, I forgot to tell you.” He fusses over Fíli's shirt and braids, and now Fíli has time to notice what Ori is wearing. It's a nicer shirt than anything Fíli has seen him in before, with a dark brown surcoat, and his hair is pulled back with a silver clasp, his braids more intricate today. 

He looks very sweet, so Fíli leans down and kisses him. For a moment, Ori's hands flutter around Fíli's face, then he relaxes, and wraps his arms around Fíli's neck. It's a short kiss, but a nice one. “I didn't bring game,” he says. “My uncle thought it would be presumptuous. But I will tomorrow.” Ori colours, and looks down. 

“You asked the king for advice about me?” He sounds a touch scandalized. 

“I asked my uncle,” Fíli reminds him, and the colour in Ori's face darkens. “Can we go in now?”

Ori nods, and opens the door, leading the way into the cramped entryway. There's a staircase that must go up to family rooms, while on Fíli's right there's a sitting room, and on his left, a kitchen. 

The sister who answered the door, Mori, is standing over the chair of a Dwarf who must be her wife Samin, to judge by the leg that ends at the knee. Her features and colouring are such a blend, Fíli's at a loss to say where one begins and another ends, but unlike her wife, she doesn't seem openly disdainful. Another sister, this one with an Eastern look to her, is minding the hearth. Fíli guesses she's Sori. 

In the kitchen, a Dwarf with silver hair is looking at him, while another dark-skinned Dwarf whispers something to him. Dori and Adjoa. 

Since Nori is gone, Fíli guesses this is the lot of them, so he bows slightly, and announces, “Fíli, at your service.” 

Sori seems unsurprised, smirking a little as Mori scowls and Samin raises her eyebrows. Dori, on the other hand, bristles, and turns to his wife, the pair of them speaking in Khuzdul too quickly for Fíli to follow easily. He looks down at Ori instead. Ori is biting his bottom lip, watching Dori and Adjoa while they speak. 

Finally though, Adjoa comes to the pair of them, and takes one of Fíli's hands in both of hers. “Welcome, Fíli,” she greets, not quite genuinely. “We are glad to receive you.” 

“Thank you,” he expresses, covering her hands with his free one. “I'm glad to meet Ori's family. All of you, really.” 

Adjoa smiles, but the expression doesn't quite meet her eyes, so Fíli lets their hands drop. Thorin had advised him not to push, to allow Ori's family to go at their own pace with him. He's a noble, and they already have a bad taste in their mouths for Fíli's kind thanks to Dwalin and Nori. He has to be _nice_ , especially since Ori is still under their responsibility. 

“Dori, son of Glori,” Dori states, nodding his head to Fíli. Fíli returns the gesture deeper in respect of Dori's place in the household, but he doesn't seem to soften at all. “Ori,” he says, still looking at Fíli, “Adjoa tells me you invited Fíli for your birthday.”

“I thought it would be nice if he was here,” Ori replies. “And this way everyone is at home, and he can meet you all, and you can all meet him.” 

“A very nice idea, I'm sure,” Dori says, and gestures for the other three to come forward. 

Before they can though, Fíli goes to Samin's chair, and nods to first Mori, then her. “Don't trouble yourself, please.” Mori's bored expression brightens considerably at this, her hand kneading her wife's shoulder affectionately. Samin raises an eyebrow, more amused at his courteous than thankful, but he'll take it. In any case, he's not so full of himself she needs to take the bother of standing in his presence. 

“Mori, daughter of Glori,” Mori introduces herself proudly. 

“Samin, daughter of Tamin,” Samin says. “Fíli, son of Vimli. I've never heard anything like your name before. Where is your line from?” 

Fíli almost falters, but recovers quickly enough he hopes no one notices. “My father's family is from the East, while my mother's family is of Erebor.” No one asks any further, as Sori approaches, but Samin is eyeing him just a touch more than he's comfortable with. Samin, daughter of Tamin. She might be of Durin's line, albeit distantly, and really, it will be true luck if she doesn't know his mother's name. 

Either way, Sori introduces herself, and asks after his swords with a clever eye. With Ori at his side, leading him to sit, and Sori keeping the conversation on their trade, there's little room for anyone else to talk. For all Ori must be bored, he stays perched on the arm of the chair, Mori joining Dori and Adjoa in the kitchen while Samin looks on the three of them by the fire in vague interest. 

Sori whistles appreciatively when Fíli unbuckles his belt and lays his swords out for her to look over. “Good balance,” she says, inspecting the design more closely. “Never seen this sigil before. Your own, or your parents'?” 

“A bit of both, and my uncle's besides,” Fíli answers, unthinking as he says, “My uncle is never to have an heir by birth, so he named me. I took some of my father, some of my mother, and some of him, and made my own. Just so they all remembered I was my own before I was theirs.” He winks when she raises an eyebrow at him, getting a laugh. 

“You're a bit cheeky, aren't you?” She stands with the sword, showing surprisingly good form. Her master must have given her some training. “Ori always did like that sort.” 

Fíli glances up at him, Ori's face reddening. “Did you?”

“He did,” Sori continues, still playing with Fíli's sword a bit. “Samin, you remember that guard he went around with a bit, the one with the braids?” She runs her hand over her own hair, Samin's eyes narrowed in thought for a moment.

“The one that stared at him for a month straight before Ori would even talk to him?” she asks, and Sori laughs, Ori's face darkening all the more. Fíli reaches for his hand, intertwining their fingers and doing his very best not to laugh. “He still comes in, just not when Ori is working. Durin's beard, but what is his name? The blond? Baduur, that's it.”

Ori looks miserable, so Fíli raises their joined hands and kisses Ori's knuckles. “So you weren't too disappointed when you met me?” It's a stupid thing to tease, because he knows Ori wasn't, but he cannot help what he thinks sometimes when it's just him in his bed and the fire is banked.

“No,” Ori says, laughing a little. "No."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's still good, right?


	7. Chapter 7

Balancing three books, four bound scrolls, a map, and his satchel is not an easy task, but Ori's had practice. It's a matter of being sure of his steps, and keeping his centre, is all. Carefully, he navigates his way around two other tables until he finds an empty one in a corner, with an unlit crystal lamp above it. He sets everything down, then climbs up on the stepladder until he can reach the lamp, just barely. He breathes on his hands as hot as he can and presses them to the crystal, whispering, “ _Lukhud_ , please.” 

It takes a moment, but slowly, a glow spreads from his palms to the heart of the crystal, where it catches and brightens to full light, illuminating his little area well enough. The crystals in the Library are old, some of the few of their kind that could be found in Ered Luin, and Dori tells him they're a poor shadow of the ones in Erebor. 

He spreads his map out, and holds the corners down with some stones from his satchel. It shows the fields around the river, and the side of the mountain Ori has access to. The other side is too far, and unsafe besides. Ori's not experienced enough to navigate bad rock. But this will be good enough. There are plenty of plants to look at. 

The Library only has a few books on plants. Of what little their people have left, books on plants were not considered a priority by really anyone. Herbalists passed most of what they knew down by word and only to their apprentices. Cooks, the same, but what a cook knew, an herbalist likely didn't, and the other way around. But Ori knew a little of both, thanks to his brothers and sisters, and their friends, and what he could piece together from his own studies on ink. He'd read these books before, but a refresher wouldn't hurt before he got started. 

Two of the scrolls are about the shapes of leaves, and another is about bark. Ori's not sure how useful they'll be in the long run, not yet clear on what the shape and arrangement of the leaves have to do with anything. But someone thought it was important, so maybe it is. The last scroll talks about he arrangement and number of petals, and then references another scroll for further reading, but that one is missing from the shelf. Ori would ask a Librarian, if the shelf wasn't so dusty where the scroll should be. Whatever it was, it's been missing for awhile. 

It's easy enough to just in one of the wooden chairs, his legs crossed under him, and read, jotting down notes with a pencil in his new sketchbook, a present from Dori and Adjoa for his birthday. He writes as small as he can, to save space, and in his own shorthand so no one else can read it. He doesn't want his master or his fellow students to know what he's doing and interfere. Besides, he wouldn't put it past some of them to nick his things and destroy them as a prank. They already don't like him. If they know he's writing about plants, he'll be even worse off. 

In two years, none of it will matter. He'll be a master in his own right and he can find a proper job for himself. He won't have to see any of them ever again, or can at least ignore them. 

Around his wrist, his ribbon reminds him that's not quite the truth any more. Wouldn't it serve them right if they knew how it was? If they knew just who Fíli, son of Vimli was? They'd really feel stupid then. Or they'd just laugh. Unfortunately, probably the latter. 

He concentrates on his book, taking the time to copy the map in one of the pages of his sketchbook on a smaller scale, and then carefully drawing the places where certain things could be found above sketches of them he copies from the original drawings, or if there is none, a description, until he's already filled a few precious pages in the new book. He sighs over them, hoping they're not being wasted. Dori and Adjoa must have really saved for the money to get this, and Ori will never be able to afford another. He has to be conservative with it, and try to remember as much as he might without writing it down. 

His eyes are hurting from strain as the crystal dims, but when he tries to relight it, it remains cold. It needs to rest now, and all the other tables are occupied. There's a few faces he recognises at some, but none friendly when he tries to meet their eyes. His time is up, in any case, so he replaces everything, careful to keep his things with him at all times. He's not foolish enough to bring the box of inks Fíli had given him here, but he does have the bolt of fabric folded up in his bag. Mori had told him to bring it by the shop when he had a chance today. 

He has everything put away, and is ready to hurry out when his exit is blocked by two Dwarrows around his age, one a classmate, the other a stranger. “Hello, Ori,” his classmate, Áed says. “What are you doing here, then?”

“Studying,” Ori replies, keeping his eyes down. “Sorry, I need to leave. I'm supposed to meet my sister.” 

“Which one?” Áed sneers, elbowing his friend. “Can you even remember?” His friend snickers, and Ori hopes that's the end of it, but then the friend leans over further into Ori's space.

Ori already knows what's coming, but he cannot quite fight his cringe when the stranger touches Ori's braids, the pads of their fingers just brushing Ori's cheek. “Awfully pretty to not have any courting beads in your hair,” they say. “Not met your mark then?” 

Áed snickers. “Even if he did, only thing he's good for is a tumble. He's Tintown stock.” 

“Still pretty,” the stranger insists, and grabs Ori's chin, forcing him to look up. He wants to kick them in the ankle and run, and if he was in his own neighbourhood, he would, but he doesn't know this stranger, doesn't know their rank or how much trouble they could get Ori in. So he stays still and tries not to show too much. Showing his distress always encourages the touching. 

“My sister is waiting,” he says again, and this time, he tries to duck away. But it's the wrong choice; the stranger crowds further into his space, Áed grinning and glancing around to make sure no one was going to help. Ori doesn't expect any, in any case. This isn't his neighbourhood, and no one here will care enough to get involved with a Tintown student being shoved in a corner. “Please, she'll get worried.” 

The stranger grins now too. “Nah, you just have to tell her someone took an interest. That's what your lot is always after, right? A rich friend to get you through the days?” 

Ori shakes his head. “I just want to leave.” 

His refusal is another mistake, because now the grip on his chin starts to hurt, and the stranger scowls. “You're not being very nice. You should be nicer to your betters. Didn't your mother raise you right? Or was she too busy spreading her legs for everyone who smiled at her?”

The swing at his mother almost does it. Ori almost shoves at the stranger, but he digs his fingers into the strap of his bag instead. She wouldn't want him to be so stupid over words, not if it could get him hurt. “My sister is waiting for me,” he says again. “I need to leave.” 

“You need to be nice,” Áed says, coming closer. 

Ori's hand tightens on his satchel. He's out of ideas, and he's too anxious to think of any more. They intend to do something, he can feel it, but if he shouts, they'll turn it on him, and he'll be removed from the Library. He wouldn't be surprised if they followed him out too, dragged him somewhere even less safe. He could try to run, but he doesn't know if he's faster than them, and they'll just be angrier that he ran. 

He's considering kicking one, shoving the other and making a break when someone asks, rather cheerily, “What's going on here, then?” 

Áed turns, clearly intending to tell them to find something else to do, but his expression turns respectful in a blink. “Lord Balin,” he says, bowing his head, elbowing his friend so they turn and do the same. “Just playing with Ori here. Aren't we, Ori?” He claps Ori on the shoulder, warning him to play along. 

He's never seen Lord Balin before. He's around Ori's height, with a long white beard he forks, and good clothes. There's not much resemblance between him and Captain Dwalin. When he looks at Ori, Ori sees the recognition in his face, and looks down at the floor. There's not likely going to be any help from him. 

“Ori,” Lord Balin says, stepping closer with his hands clasped behind his back. “Ori, son of Cines?” 

“Yes, sir,” Ori replies, swallowing. 

“What a fortunate coincidence.” He sounds very happy, surprising Ori. “I've been meaning to speak with you, my lad. Come along then, come along, luckily I have a free hour just now and we can speak.” He takes Ori by the elbow, the other two allowing him without question. Lord Balin has the air of someone who clearly expects people to move aside, and they do. “You and I have much to discuss, Ori, son of Cines.” 

Now is not the time to question good fortune, no matter what Lord Balin wants to speak on. He's Captain Dwalin's brother, so hopefully that means he's as good as Captain Dwalin, and that at least means he's better than Áed and his friend. So Ori goes with him, as close to Lord Balin as he dares to be. 

They're a few paces away when Ori manages to say, “Thank you, Lord Balin.” 

“Whatever for, lad?” Lord Balin has a puzzled look, but it's not genuine, and he clearly sees that Ori doesn't believe him. “You study with Lady Dua, of the Longbeards, don't you?” 

“Why do you know that?” It's the wrong question, so Ori adds, “Yes, sir, she's my master.” 

“Is she a good master?” Ori's not sure what the correct answer is to that. Is Lord Balin wanting him to speak out of turn so he can cause trouble for Ori's family because of Nori and what he did to Dwalin? Or is this about Fíli? Did he tell Lord Balin, and now Lord Balin is trying to warn Ori off? 

Ori stops walking. “I really need to meet my sister. She'll worry if I'm late.”

“You have many sisters, don't you? Four, though you used to have five, apparently.” He knows about Lori. That had to have taken a bit of searching, unless Dwalin told him. Or Fíli, but Ori doesn't want to think that Fíli would be telling others things Ori had told him in private. “And two brothers. Including one who is of utmost interest to me, for reasons we do not need to discuss, I believe.” He taps his nose, smiling. “For goodness' sake, lad, breathe. I'm not going to bite.” 

There's something nice about his manners that's almost like Dori, and Ori eases a little, his fingers loosening on his satchel. “Have you really been wanting to talk to me, sir?” 

“As a matter of fact, I have, but not for anything involving troublesome brothers and their very sorry business.” That's a relief, and it almost makes Ori smile to hear Captain Dwalin dismissed so easily. “Fíli has asked me to look at your work, and see if I might be of assistance.” 

Ori freezes again, his throat tight. “I didn't...I wouldn't...I didn't ask him to do that, sir, I swear.” He bows his head respectfully, his face burning. Fíli had no business doing that, making Ori look like an opportunist. “I'm sorry,” he offers uselessly. 

“Believe me, if I thought you were trying to get something out of Fíli, this would be a very different conversation,” Lord Balin says, more seriously. “As it stands, Fíli is many things, but he is not easily manipulated, not even by his mark. He is, however, good-hearted, and prone to showing off, even if he doesn't realize he's doing it.” 

The corner of Ori's mouth twitches, thinking of Ivy, and his birthday. “He is very sweet,” he says aloud, without thinking. “That is...” He ducks his head again, unable to look at the lord. “I like him very much.” 

“Yes, I can see that,” Lord Balin says, smiling. “And he's becoming very fond of you, that's quite obvious.” 

The quiet burst of joy in his chest spreads quickly through him, reddening his face again. He knows Fíli is fond of him. He'd even come to Ori's home, and faced most of his siblings, and been very polite, enough even Dori and Adjoa had given their cautious consent. There's nothing he can say to Lord Balin about that though, so he stays quiet, his eyes on the ground. 

Lord Balin doesn't press. “I would be interested in seeing your work, in any case. I'll need to have my secretary check my schedule, and once she has, I'll send word to your home on a day you might come by my offices.” 

Ori swallows, and nods quickly. “Yes, sir. My family would be very honoured.” That's a lie, a big one. Better he not tell them about any of this, not until he had good news for sure. They're going to be horribly suspicious of Lord Balin taking an interest in Ori, especially since they don't know about Fíli. Lord Balin might not look to kindly on the deceit though, so Ori keeps that to himself as well. 

This is good news, if he thinks Ori's work is any good. If he would write a note to Ori's master, or even pass a message along, she would have to be more patient with him, out of respect for Lord Balin. And if Ori is very, very polite and Fíli is with him, Lord Balin might even let Ori look at some of his books, and maps, and maybe even the art Ori is sure he has. Ori would love to see art and be allowed to simply look, without anyone telling him to move along. 

Best not to get too hopeful. Lord Balin will probably see the same flaws his master does, and say something very polite but otherwise dismissive. And he won't want Ori touching his books. He's saved Ori from a thrashing, and that's the most Ori should ask from him. “Excuse me, Lord Balin, I really do have to meet my sister, and I have work this evening as well.”

“Of course, lad.” Lord Balin has a nice smile, Ori decides, if nothing else. “I wouldn't want to get you in trouble. Be on your way.”

Ori bows a little, then escapes, his hood pulled over his head so no one immediately recognises him. He happens upon a group when he reaches the door, and he disappears amongst them, able to hide in their bulk for awhile. As always, his chest eases when he passes through the crumbling arch that marks the end of the Bronze Streets and the beginning of Tintown. If Áed and his friend are still after Ori, they won't dare grab him down here. 

Nori might be gone in body, but Ori's noticed some of his friends and people who look like they could be his friends in places they wouldn't be normally. Smoking on front steps near their house, selling wares off a blanket near Ori's master's school, playing dice at the forge, all perfectly reasonable places for them to be, perfectly reasonable, but not their usual haunts. Even gone, his brother is protecting their family as best he can. 

And if Áed and his friend think Nori's friends give a tinker's damn about noble blood, they'll be getting a good look at that noble blood all over the cobblestones. 

In any case, he's undisturbed as he makes his way to Mori's work, except by people saying hello. One guard stops him, but it's only to ask about the menu at the restaurant tonight, and when Ori tells them there'll be turnip soup, they brighten and wish him a good afternoon. Adjoa's turnip soup is very good, and it'll be a good supper when it's Ori's turn to eat. 

The shop Mori works out of is probably the most respectable place any of them work out of. The owners are an old couple that know more than their fair share of middling gentry who don't mind summoning Mori and the rest of the workers to their homes. They'd never deign to set foot in the neighbourhood themselves, of course. 

Mori is pinning what will be a skirt around a metal form, pins in her mouth, so Ori waits for her to finish, sitting cross-legged on the floor by her basket. He starts to pass her things when she waves her hand at him, signing what she wants so the pins don't fall out. The fabric she's pinning is white, almost snow-white. Someone's funeral clothes then, someone with a heavy purse, to waste so much on something that could never be worn again, unless they paid to have it taken apart, dyed, and made up again. Not a high noble, they would go to a shop in the higher neighbourhoods. Probably someone Nori or Sori had worked for. Not a noble, but wealthy. 

“Little love, tell me something,” Mori says, after she's stuck the extra pins in their little pillow. “Why do people wear white when someone dies? So odd to me. We don't wear white.” 

“White means nothing,” Ori replies, remembering reading it long ago. “There's no colour, no life. Like snow and ice. It means everything that matters, like the plants, and the insects, they're dead. Even the water stops. The Sun goes away.” He shrugs. “But some texts say it's because of the Moon. That the Moon has no life, and so we mimic moonlight.” 

“That's stupid,” Mori dismisses, breaking Ori's distant thoughts. “There are things that only come out at night, you know. Owls, bats, and moths. Badgers, and fireflies. Wolves, they love the night. You venture out so much, I know you've heard them call to one another.” 

“I have,” he replies. Many times, he's heard wolves, and listened quietly, his heartbeat like a drum as he tried to stay quiet so as not to spook them. They always sound happy, when they find one another in the trees, panting and whining and yipping. Only one or two have ever been brave enough to venture outside the trees towards him, Ori holding completely still, as Nori had told him. 

Once, a very young one with spindly legs had come within a stone's throw, panting, its tongue lolling out of its mouth. It had tilted its head at him first one way, than the other, not unlike a bird. But something, a rabbit maybe, had rustled in the bushes, and startled it, and the rest of the pack, safe in the trees, had taken off, the young one following. Ori had drawn it on the wall after, closing his eyes to keep the memory bright. “Moonflowers only bloom at night as well.”

Mori winks at him. “As I said, nonsense. Now let me see what that lad gave you again, in the proper light.” Ori passes over the bolt of fabric, and Mori unfolds it, her lips pursed. “It's a good piece. I have enough decent wool to make you a fine new coat, and this will add some pretty detail.”

“A new coat?” Ori asks hopefully. 

“It was to be mine and Samin's gift for you for Durin's Day, but the Hedge says it'll be an early frost this year, so you'll need it sooner. Dori is making you new mittens, by the way, so make sure your beloved noble doesn't decide to buy you some.” He needed them made up again last year for the seventh time, so a new set is needed. He doesn't think even Mori can make them whole again. “Suppose he wears fur?” 

Ori shrugs. “Does it matter?” 

She tsks. “That's nob-talk, little love. Careful he's not turning your head.” She crooks her finger, telling him to stand. “Let me take your measurements, then. I think you've grown a little since the last time.” 

While she does that, Ori asks, “Did you ask the Hedge anything else?” 

“I'll ask Adjoa if I want my fortune read,” she replies smartly. “Ori, don't be going to her for nothing, you understand? You need something, you ask me or Adjoa. Between the pair of us, we can handle that sort of thing.” 

“Why can you ask her about the weather, but not anything else?”

“Because when I ask for the weather, she asks for thread in payment, and I can spare thread. Anything else, she'll ask for more, and she already has one lock of my hair. I'll not be so fool as to give her another, not unless I absolutely must.” When she notices Ori's open mouth, she clucks it shut, and says, “Don't you go telling Dori I did that, mind you. You know how he feels about spells and charms and such.” 

Dori hates all of it, with more venom than Ori understands. They're allowed their own charms and the like, but Dori won't have any of it in the shop or the common areas of the house. “Why did you give her your hair?” 

She's finished with him, so he drops his arms and sits again, this time on the bench meant for people awaiting orders. There's no one else here for the moment, so he can get away with it. It's hard, unforgiving wood, in any case, so it's not as though it's much of a treat. 

“I asked for a charm,” Mori admits. “When Nori left here, I had her make up one I could hang in the window. It's just a safe-harbour charm, nothing too special. She claims it'll get him home, at the very least, but she was very vague on what state he'd be in. I wasn't giving her any more than a braid though, no matter what she tried to wheedle out of me.” 

Her hands are very sure as she folds up the fabric, tucking it away in her basket, even though Ori knows she's bothered by the matter. He's never been very clear on what the Hedge does exactly, her trade talked around rather than about. He does know people go to her about babies, and colds, and luck, but what her purpose is in those things is muddy. “I miss Nori,” he says, just to say it aloud.

“I suppose I do too.” She really must, if she's willing to say it. “I don't like it when we're split up. It feels unnatural. You know, sometimes, I forget Lori is gone, and I expect to see her sometime throughout the day. I think I'll come home, and she'll be smoking on the steps with one of her mates, and then she'll come in, and she and Nori will complain about supper. Nori always did whatever Lori did, even if he did like his supper. Or I think Samin is going to talk about her when we go to bed. They rather disliked one another.”

If it was another sibling, he'd ask for more, but it's Mori, and her jaw is tightened. The story is done, and he'd do better to let it lie for now, and change the subject. “Have you had any more commissions?” 

“No, still this same blasted wedding. There's only the one bride, but she's as demanding as three. She keeps wanting the top laced tighter, but then when we do as she says, she moans that she cannot breathe. We come around full circle five times a fitting, I swear. _And_ she had the nerve to ask for more beading after we were already finished, then blamed me. Claims she wants her eyes to shine as bright as mine.” The disgusted eye roll tells Ori exactly what she thinks of that. “She's got dark eyes, the ninny. And she's as dull as flint, besides. Take mithril and diamonds to brighten her. She could pluck my eyes right out of my head, shove 'em in place, and they'd be mud in a breath.” 

He kicks his feet, and listens to her vent for a time, content to just be here in the familiar shop with her after the Library. The smell of the place is comfortable; fabric and thread and wood. Mori too, when she comes close enough that the lavender scent she dabs behind her ears and on her wrists every morning finds its way to his nose. Their mother had always made her daily scent from the lavender, and so did his sisters. Glori had of course had some nicer ones, gifts, but lavender he always pairs with the comfort of his sisters. 

“I should go cut some herbs,” he says, when he notices the hour. Mori looks at the clock too, and grits her teeth. 

“You should,” she agrees. “Before you lose the light. Do me a favour, love, try and see if you can find some bark from a rose elder, and some from an oak tree.” 

“I was going to get some berries from the rose elder any way.” He can make a decent ink with them, and he's starting to run low on his paints and such. He wants to start gathering gravel and sand too for the roof, so he can start his promised moss garden. “I'll see you at home?”

“I'll come by the restaurant for supper.” She pulls him down to kiss him on the cheek, then sends him on his way.

It's a hot day outside, so Ori leaves most of his outer layers in his little spot, and rolls the sleeves of his thin cotton shirt up to his elbows. He gets the bark and the berries first, so that chore is done, and leaves the lot of it with the rest of his things. After that, he's free to gather what he needs to make his paints. Arrowroot first, dug up using a sharp stone he found a few years ago that makes a decent enough pick. He ends up filling both baskets with it after he stumbles on a good amount. Better to have extra than not enough, and arrowroot keeps well in the larder. 

The arrowroot is the hardest ingredient. After he has some, he can search for what he needs to make colours. There's plenty of wild apples in the area, so he can get the leaves and bark, and bark from the oak trees too. There aren't many walnuts that he can find, unfortunately, but he still has a lot of brown saved up, in any case. He'll need more soon though, if he wants to practise drawing plants for his work. And he really will need to practise if he wants Lord Balin to find his work worthwhile. 

Ori wonders if Nori has something to do with Lord Balin's offer. Captain Dwalin has been gone from the settlement, supposedly on a trip, but Ori is suspicious of just where that trip is to. Nori's letters are normal, but Ori can't help but worry about him. Nori always does stupid things when he's upset, and he loves Dwalin. If he starts an affair with him, there will be trouble. Maybe not right this moment, but soon enough. 

There's sourberries growing near the blueberries, and the raspberries are ripe now too. He eats as many as he puts in his basket, or maybe more, the sourberries making a much bigger pile than the other two. Once, when he was little, Nori had dared him to eat five, and Ori had spent a day in bed, in agony, while Nori was punished. They make a rich blue dye though, perfect for paint and dye, as long as he wore a scarf over his mouth and nose when he ground it up. 

The bitter wild grapes that climb up the old stone fences are easier to get to, his hands and wrists scratched from the raspberries. After he has a good haul, he brings it all back uphill, and hides it away, planning on getting the rest of what he needs tomorrow and making the paint. He already has arrowroot dried and waiting in another place, more a slit in the rock than an actual opening, but he can slip in, and the inside is bigger and dry, perfect for what he needs. 

Since he's already out, he starts cutting more lavender, and rosemary too. It's too far to go back down to the river, but he will tomorrow to gather shells. 

The light tells him he needs to head back inside the mountain and get cleaned up. 

There are already customers by the time he comes in, so he grabs his apron off the hook in the back and gets to work, not bothering his siblings. Once everything is in order, he can eat and talk to them a little. It's not a pay day or anything, so the place stays calm and quiet while they all work, Ori keeping the tables clean and what dishes are used washed. Soup means the thick bread bowls Adjoa makes, so it's more crumbs than anything else he has to keep cleared. Mugs for beer just need to be rinsed and put back out. 

Things have slowed to a trickle, Ori eating at last, when a stranger comes in. They have a large pack slung over their shoulder made of rough canvas, and a hat over their short, black hair. “Evening, lad,” they say to Ori. “I'm looking for the Ri family. This is their shop, right?” 

He nods. “I'm the youngest, -”

“Ori!” the stranger cuts him off cheerily, surprising Ori. They sit across from Ori without invitation, their bag thumping on the floor. “I'm called Bofur. I'm one of Nori's mates.” Ori eyes them suspiciously over his food, and the Dwarf frowns for a second, pulling on their moustaches before smiling wide and bright. “Ah, yeah, all right, give us a moment...phrase is...hold on, let me get it right....oh! 'Don't shoot at the ravens', that's it? Or maybe it was crows...any way, hold on, I've got you some post...” They start searching their pockets until they produce a letter that's been wet at least once. “And he sent some presents too. Don't remember what they are, I was a bit past my limit.” 

By now, Samin has come around the counter, one hand out of sight and likely on the club she keeps back there. “Help you, stranger?” 

“No worries, no worries,” they say cheerfully, holding up their hands. “Nori sent me. Got you some letters, some packages, that sort of thing.” 

She eyes them. “What's Nori's mark, then?”

“Well, uh...” the stranger shrugs. “Can't say I know, now that I think on it. Never takes that brace off, does he? He and them have a falling out or something?” Samin looks at Ori, clearly as perplexed as he is. They seem like the sort of person Nori attracts; open and cheerful, and eyeing Ori's food far too intently to be a threat. “Could I trouble you for a bowl and something to drink? I've got coin.” As proof, they pull a little pouch out from under their shirt, where some coins jingle. “Two bowls even, I'm starved.” 

“Show us what Nori has sent, then, and I'll get you something,” she says, disappearing back into the kitchen, but not before hitching her chin at the guards eating at the counter. They're more Nori's sort than Dwalin's, and they'll make sure Bofur doesn't suddenly come at Ori with a blade. 

“Here, this one is your birthday present,” Bofur says, handing over one. “See, got your name and everything.” It _is_ Nori's handwriting, so Ori opens the parcel. It's a plain wooden box, tied shut with twine, but inside, there's a pile of green stones, rough and foggy. “That's sea glass. Not worth anything, but real pretty, right?” 

They catch the candlelight very nicely, and Ori cannot wait to see it in the sunlight. “Where'd he get all of it?”

“Lady who runs the house we stay in collects it. Traded it to Nori. She's got plenty of the stuff. Don't rightly know what she does with it.” Samin comes out with the food, followed by Dori. 

Bofur whistles long and low when they get a look at Dori. “You're even prettier than Nori,” they say, not blinking. Ori and Samin roll their eyes, both of them disgusted. “You must be Dori. I'm called Bofur. Friend of Nori's.” They actually take their hat off, placing it on the table, and brush their hair down. 

“Did Nori tell you I was married?” Dori drawls.

Bofur's shoulders slump. “Forgot that bit.” They perk up after only a moment though, brushing it off easily. “Well, here you are then, all of Nori's letters to the family, and wait, I forgot, this one is just for you, Ori.” He hands a letter over with only Ori's name on the front, then pulls what must be the rest of the parcels out of their pack. “Brought you all sorts of things.” 

Dori relents with, “We'll talk after the shop is closed,” so Samin and Ori relax. Samin goes back behind the counter again, and Dori gathers up everything to take into the back. The guards are still keeping an eye on Ori and Bofur, so he feels safe enough. Besides, he's hungry. 

“Oh, this is good,” Bofur praises, drinking what's left of their first bowl, then tearing into the bread. “Could I get some more?” 

Ori nods, already standing to clear his space now that he's done. He'll save Nori's letter for later, so he tucks it away in the box of sea glass. “Do you want more ale too?” Bofur nods, and Ori gets back to work. 

Bofur ends up eating three bowls, a plate of grapes, some cheese, two sliced apples, and some cold chicken, along with two pints of beer, and a pitcher of cold ginger-water. “Never seen anyone their size eat so much,” Samin mutters to Ori, when he comes back with the last of the mugs. Everyone else has cleared out, the last of the evening shift headed off to the guardhouse. “Where are they putting it all?” 

They belch loudly, startling Ori and Samin both.

Mori and Sori come in right as Ori is putting a piece of pie in front of Bofur. “Oi, there better be some for us,” Mori whines, sitting at the same table. “I know you, don't I? You're that bloke Nori runs around with.” 

“Yeah, you thumped me once,” Bofur tells her, without any ill will. That reassures Ori enough to finally relax. He hadn't been sure Bofur wasn't some thief or something. “You're Mori, I remember. Still as lovely as ever.” 

“I definitely remember you now,” she drawls, resting her chin in her hand. “Didn't know you were in Nori's line of work. Thought that was more Bifur's area.” Ori almost wants to ask, but he's too tired to care. He has lessons in the morning, then he has to get the paint started, and he really needs to gather shells while the river is low. The autumn storms will flood it, and it won't be truly safe again until next summer. 

“Dori, can I go home?” Ori asks, rubbing at his face. 

Dori's sat down at the table with the rest, and really, it does look as though it will be fun, but his bed sounds much nicer. His bed is soft and warm, and he's starting to get a head-ache. 

“Is something wrong?” Adjoa asks, feeling his temple. “You're not warm.” 

“Just tired,” he says. “Can I?”

“I'll walk with him,” Samin offers, getting her cane under her. Once she's balanced, she turns and kisses Mori. “Sorry, my heart, but I'm done in. I'll see you when you come to bed.” They kiss again, longer, Ori turning his eyes away quickly. His sisters can be awful, but Bofur seems to be perfectly happy to watch. 

Well, now he's sure this is Nori's friend, at the very least.

Samin leans on him on the way home, clearly as tired as him, her cane tapping the cobblestones in a familiar rhythm. “I liked your Fíli,” she says, as they approach their yellow door. “He was very polite, for a noble. I'm sure Dori and Adjoa will come around.” 

“They hate him, don't they?” They haven't really said anything since Ori's birthday one way or the other, beyond their consent. He's glad he hasn't been forbidden from seeing Fíli, or given any restrictions, but when he's tried to bring Fíli up, they've changed the subject or killed the conversation. He wants them to _like_ Fíli, not just put up with him for Ori's sake. “He was really polite!” 

“He was a surprise, which, by the way, well done, you and Sori are truly the biggest idiots in the house now that Nori is gone on his little adventure. Why did you think that was a good idea?” 

“I wanted Dori to have to let him in,” Ori admits. “Adjoa and Sori knew.” 

“Why was I left out?” she asks, offended. 

“You tell Mori everything,” Ori reminds her. “And Mori is insufferable.” 

“Quiet, that's my beloved. But, fair point. In any case, the lad didn't make any friends by coming with those two swords, and then offering to bring game as he did. Hardly told us anything about himself either, and that didn't do him any favours.” That's Ori's own fault, but he doesn't say anything. If Fíli does reveal too much, his family will be...well, he doesn't quite know what they'll be, but he'll wager it won't be good. “They'll come around.” 

He hopes so, but he's having a hard time thinking beyond the next few steps. He hardly makes it up his ladder after he washes up in the kitchen, and it's only with his last effort that he manages to change into his nightshirt before crawling into bed. He's so tired, he forgets Nori's letter completely, asleep within moments of his head hitting the pillow.

The morning gets off to an early start, Ori completing his chores before he runs off to lessons. Today is one of the days his master decides to ignore him, so he judges it a good lesson. They finish at midday, and he gets back home, where he grabs something for midday and the rest of his supplies. He leaves a note on the table, using his lessons slate, a surprise gift from Spyros for his birthday, telling his family where he'll be, and then finally, he escapes outside and up to his place. 

Everything is waiting for him, so he gets started, starting a little fire and putting the battered old camp-pot over it on a spit. He'd found it ages ago back when he first taught himself, the thing in desperate need of mending. Sori had done the work, complaining the whole time she was no tinker, but it works well, so Ori guesses she is a bit of one. 

“ _Muhudel, utamab,_ ” he prays briefly to the fire, before heating his first mixture. “ _Blessing of all blessings, greatest touch of yours, see my craft and call it good._ ” It never hurt to ask, even if the Maker likely wasn't too interested in blessing an apprentice scribe's paint. “ _Please let me show my best to Lord Balin,_ ” he adds quickly, just in case the Maker is indeed listening.

It's too much to hope, but he really does want to impress Lord Balin. If he really does like Ori's work, maybe he'll even speak to another teacher, put in a good work so Ori could have a small scholarship and be under a different teacher. 

It's ridiculous to want impossible things, but he cannot help it, cannot stop himself from imagining a new master, a nicer one, who liked him and didn't look down on him. There's not much to have but his own imagination, any way, so what does it matter? It isn't as though anyone can see into his mind, read his thoughts. Not even the Hedge could do that, he was sure. The Maker could, but he wouldn't hold a fantasy against Ori, would he?

The last bowl is being sealed when company joins him. 

“You're a mess,” Fíli laughs, meaning Ori's stained hands and wrists, some of it even up to his elbows. He does kiss Ori after, not seeming to mind, but Ori keeps distance between them, to keep Fíli's clothes clean. “What are you doing?” 

“Making paint,” he replies. “It needs to sit and harden now though, so I need to go to the river to get shells.” 

“What, right now?” He's looking over Ori's work, interested, apparently. “Balin tells me he spoke with you yesterday. I had my lessons this morning.” 

He'd almost forgotten Fíli's involvement in that. “Have you been telling people about me?”

“I asked Balin, but only because I thought you might like having a real master look over your work. And I didn't order it, or anything, before you get that in your head. He has his own reasons for doing things, and he doesn't usually confide in me. It's a good opportunity for you, you know. Balin is -” 

“I know,” Ori says, too nervous to think about it any more. “Are you free for awhile?” 

“I am yours,” Fíli promises, kissing him again. “I'll even help you get seashells. And then maybe we could go for a swim?” 

“You know how to swim?” Ori's never even tried, too afraid of the water to dare. “Really?” 

“Really, truly.” Another kiss, and he really doesn't seem terribly considered with keeping his clothes clean. It must be easy not to think about when someone else does your washing, he thinks, almost annoyed at him for it. It's a little hard to be annoyed with someone so intent on being close to you though. “It'll be fun.”

He really does help Ori gather seashells, not playing at the chore as Ori half-thought he might. He asks Ori what they're looking for, pays attention when Ori explains, and by the time a half hour has passed, the basket is full and they can start walking upstream, Ori following Fíli along the shore of the wide river. “Where are we going?”

“There's a place where it pools, just up here. Me, Kíli, and my cousin Gimli come here whenever we can. But Kíli wanted to go shooting today, and Gimli went with him, so I decided to try my luck and see if you were here.” He grabs Ori around the waist and pulls him close. What paint wasn't rubbed off by the sand and cold water is dry, so Ori is happy to kiss him back. “My lucky day, I suppose.” 

“Suppose,” Ori says, and they kiss again. 

The river spreads out wide and lazy where Fíli leads him, tall rocks breaking the flow of the river to make calm areas. Fíli strips down to his trousers without a care, and even goes to unlace those. But he looks at Ori first, an eyebrow raised, and when Ori can't quite manage to look up from his own feet, Fíli leaves them. “Come on then,” he encourages, pulling on Ori's shirt. “Water will feel good, I promise.”

His shoes are easy enough, as his outer shirt. But his trousers are rather good, and Ori doesn't want them ruined. His inner shirt is a hand-me-down, big on him, or at least big enough to be somewhat modest with someone he hasn't been completely modest with. Fíli is already wading in, waiting for Ori to come to him. He's waist deep when Ori finally steps in, the rock slick under his feet. He eases further in, until he's off the bank and up to his knees, walking on sand and smaller, slippery stones. The water is cold, a sharp difference from the summer heat, and he doesn't know that he likes it. He has to push his shirt down when the fabric floats up, holding it in the water until it soaks through and clings to his thighs.

It's more pride than sense that gets him to Fíli, and then Fíli pulls them deeper, until Ori is clinging to him, his arms around Fíli's damp shoulders. “It's all right,” Fíli reassures him. “River is too slow to hurt you here. I've got you, and you trust me, right?” 

Ori nods, the water lapping at his neck as Fíli finally takes them deep enough Ori's feet don't touch. He closes his eyes, but nothing bad happens. It's scary, but not the horrible kind. The kind of scary new things are. Slowly, Fíli eases them apart, encouraging Ori to kick his feet, and showing him how to move his arms. His toes just barely brush the sand, enough he could hold himself above water if he had to, but he seems to be doing all right for now. 

Fíli is completely comfortable, hardly seeming to make any effort at all to stay afloat. Ori tries to imitate him, and slowly, the tension in his stomach unravels and it becomes much easier to keep himself up. The water isn't nearly so cold now either. “See?” Fíli asks, coming closer, until he can support Ori again. “Not so bad, right?” Ori shakes his head. “Will you do anything if someone dares you? You don't seem scared of anything, really.” 

“I have six older brothers and sisters,” Ori reminds him, trying not to inhale too sharply when Fíli takes more of his weight. “Doing stupid things to show off is pretty normal.” He bites his lip, and asks, “Do you not like it?”

“No, I like it,” Fíli says, moving them closer to one of the large rocks. “You don't look it, but you're bold. I really like that.” 

The rock is against his back, the pair of them almost hidden, if there was anyone to see them out here. Just being near Fíli is usually enough to make Ori light-headed, but like this is so much worse. It's like that day in the rain, when he actually put himself in Fíli's lap like some tavern server. Fíli had definitely liked that, and Ori had too, but it was no way to behave. 

Just like hooking a leg around Fíli now so Fíli can feel him, and dragging him in for a kiss was also very much no way to behave, not at all. Fíli is behaving just as badly, maybe that makes it all right? He's got himself shoved completely between Ori's legs now, and Ori can feel his cock, how hard he already is. The kissing is rather messy this time, and once Fíli starts moving against him, it's a little hard to think of much but how good it feels. 

This is very improper, and if anyone knew they were doing this, Ori would be in so much trouble. This would definitely get him banned from seeing Fíli. “We should stop,” he says, and he doesn't know why, but he almost thinks Fíli won't. 

He does though, bowing his head against Ori's shoulder, completely still. Ori can feel the muscle in his shoulders and his back, his chest pressed against Ori's, and really, his old shirt, soaking wet, is hardly any sort of barrier. He can feel all of him, and who would find out?

“It feels so good to touch you,” Fíli says, kissing Ori's shoulder. “I get carried away sometimes, is all -” Ori decides he doesn't care, and tightens his leg around Fíli, kissing him on the mouth hard to quiet him. The kiss doesn't last, their movements too quick and hard, but Ori decides he doesn't care about that either.


	8. Chapter 8

Ori is still trying to remember how to breathe a half-hour into his meeting with Lord Balin. He had hoped Fíli could come, but Ori hasn't had a chance to see him in the days since the missive arrived from Lord Balin's offices. He'd been lucky to be the one to get it when it came to the door. If any of his siblings knew, there's be questions, and he doesn't have a good story yet.

For his part, Lord Balin is mostly quiet, peering down at the compilation of Ori's work. He has no idea what Lord Balin is thinking at any point in his perusal. He doesn't seem displeased at least, but maybe he wasn't expecting much. Finally, he shuts the wooden portfolio, and folds his hands over it, smiling at Ori. “Kíli mentioned there were sums on the walls as well?” 

“Yes,” Ori says, nodding. “I've got a good head for numbers, I've had lots of practise. My oldest brother and sister have had me doing the books for awhile for the restaurant, and my oldest sister has me help with the household and the taxes, and I...” He stumbles when he catches himself about to admit Sori's shop has him help with the second set of books the tax collectors never see, and that Nori taught him how to run a book. “I learn quick with numbers. Even my master thinks so.” She doesn't say he's bad at it, at least, so that must he's decent. 

“And your writing?” 

This is a little harder. “My Common is where it should be, and I can read Khuzdul fine, but my script is very far behind. And we don't speak it at home, not really, so my accent isn't very good.” He wants to say that his first teacher was from the Northern Mountains, and that's probably why his Khuzdul is so bad, but that feels like making excuses. “I can read and write in Sindarin passably well, but I'm not very good at understanding it -”

Lord Balin holds up a hand, and Ori's heart sinks. He kept telling himself not to get his hopes up, but apparently he had. “You can read and write in Sindarin?” 

That's a question. A subtle one, but Ori is used to subtle questions. “Mostly. I can read basic things, but anything really difficult, and I'm lost. My first teacher, she was from the North, and before...before the Desolation, she was an interpreter. She offered to teach me, and I thought it could be useful.” That's a lie, but only half of one. Ori had convinced himself then that was why he wanted to learn, but truthfully, he'd been starving for more books, more stories, and she had those Elven books calling to him. He'd wanted so badly to be able to read them, he hadn't cared about the Betrayal or the Desolation or any of it. “But there's no one to really practice with anymore.”

“ _Can you understand this_?” he asks, his accent stronger than Ori's first teacher's, but it's a simple enough question, so Ori nods. “And your Iglishmêk?” 

“I have to use that in the restaurant a lot, actually, so I'm really quick.” That at least he's confident about. He has to sign all the time when he's working, and he's quick with learning ones he doesn't immediately know. “Some of the customers even taught me poems, and songs.” He thinks that's an achievement, or rather hopes. Singing and poetry are different in signing, and it had taken him awhile to get the idea, but everyone always says he's good. “I can even interpret.” 

The trouble is, Lord Balin has a sort of genial way about him that makes it hard to discern his actual feelings. Ori doesn't know what he wants to hear from Ori. Nobles usually like it when Ori's sort is humble, but that's not quite the situation here. Does he want Ori to be more sure of himself? 

He wants to go back to the neighbourhood, where there aren't any nobles to make things complicated. By reflex, he finds himself rubbing his left wrist, where he has a sort of bracelet made of braided yarn scraps. It blocks out the mark better than the ribbon, and doesn't look as frayed. 

“Why do you cover it?” The question surprises Ori out of his thoughts, and he unexpectedly meets Lord Balin's eyes. “Your mark. You had it covered the first day I met you as well. Is that a common practice in the Tin Neighbourhood?”

Ori shrugs. “Some do. When it doesn't work out, people will cover them up sometimes. My mother always wore cuffs of some kind.” He hadn't meant to say that, and he feels the heat creeping up the back of his neck. “People would tease that they were Fíli, son of Vimli. It was just easier.” 

“Ah, yes,” Lord Balin hems. “Those lads in the Library the day we met, do you know them?” 

“One is another student of my Master's. The other is a stranger.” In truth, Áed has been making a habit of sneering at Ori whenever he gets a chance now, warning Ori to stay out of his way without a word. Áed is a bit bigger, but Ori thinks if it comes down to brass and bone, he could either get away or at the very least hold his own. But he's not nearly so stupid he thinks he wouldn't suffer consequences. “I really am grateful for your help, Lord Balin.” 

Lord Balin settles back in his chair, his hands joined over his stomach. His mouth twists and then he stands and says, “Come with me.”

There's not really any choice but to obey, so Ori does. He follows Lord Balin out of the little office and down the hall, up a wide flight of dark stairs to a set of double doors that he opens with a key. Ori finds himself in what is very clearly the private living area of the house. He's almost too frightened to walk over the thick patterned carpet laid out on dark, gleaming floors, but he does, because Lord Balin doesn't pause. 

The next room must be the sitting room, and Ori only thought he could not breathe before. Now he really cannot, as he looks around the well-lit room, the walls lined with book cases and alcoves, full of books and art. There are engravings on the ceiling, complicated fractal patterns that all join in the centre where the crystal that lights the room hangs from the ceiling, carved in such a clever way that it's like a star right there where Ori can touch. 

He looks around in awe at the room, hardly able to navigate his way around the rich furniture to come closer to the walls. 

In one alcove, there's a statuette of a creature he knows very well. He raises a hand to touch it before he stops himself, aware of his place in all of this, but then he hears a chuckle, and Lord Balin says, “It won't break, I swear. Do you know what it is?”

“A sphinx,” Ori says, in absolute awe. “I had one drawn on my wall before. I copied it from a book. I love the story, the idea of them.” 

“You loved the idea of a riddling creature that would smile as soon as tear out your throat?” Lord Balin asks, coming closer to Ori. 

Ori turns away from it reluctantly, playing with his scarf. “I don't think I'd like to meet one,” he says, because he really doesn't. Though part of him _would_ , would love to see something so powerful, so ancient and old. “But they seem like they'd be very beautiful.” 

Lord Balin nods, seeming to agree even if Ori thinks he might be laughing at Ori a little. “I spoke with your master this very morning, Ori, son of Cines. I was curious about you.” Ori's heart drops. “She didn't have much to say that bears repeating, but I get the idea you already know that.” The suggestion she had anything at all to say worth repeating is more the surprise. “Yet, when I look over your work, the account she gave does not quite match.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” and now Lord Balin sits in one of the fine chairs in the room, “that you and I very unusually connected. Our brothers are joined, and you yourself are joined to someone I am very fond of. Whatever happens in the future, you are going to be a part of it. Part of my duties to the royal family include making things...smooth. Your brother makes things...less smooth. You do as well. I cannot make your brother's transgressions disappear, but you, I can make things easier for.” 

Again, Ori wants to ask for Lord Balin's meaning, but he's already asked once, and it might look stupid to ask again. Still, he needs to know just what is going on here. “I'm not going to do anything to embarrass Fíli, I promise.” 

“Let's hope not,” he replies. “But that wasn't what I meant, lad. I mean to ask if you think you would benefit from becoming a student of mine, instead of Lady Dua.” 

Ori shakes his head. “We could never afford it. We can't even afford her.” 

“I intended it to be on a scholarship.” Lord Balin keeps looking at him, and Ori really does think he might be laughing at Ori a little. “You would need to bring your own things, of course, as I'm sure you do now, and the trolley fare will be your own responsibility -”

“Thank you.” It seems disloyal to the neighbourhood and his own family the way his voice trembles. “You have no idea. You really do not know, you cannot.” His throat is getting tight, and there's heat pricking his eyes as he bows his head. Trolley fare is nothing compared to the money needed for his master's fees. The relief it will give his family is... “I'll be a good student, I promise. I'll be the best one you have.”

“Considering how often the other two conveniently forget to even bother to show up, that won't be very difficult at all.” He gets up and finds something on the desk; a sheet of paper, as it turns out. He uses a pen in the stand, and writes out a timetable he hands off to Ori. It's for four days out of the week, _four days_ , Ori can hardly believe it, and for six hours each day! “I won't pretend I don't have other responsibilities, so you'll be on their timetable. This might even have the benefit of Fíli showing up, and hopefully doing more than making a nuisance of himself.” 

It's meant as a tease, Ori is sure, and it has the intended effect; he feels himself turning red. “I really am grateful, Lord Balin.” 

“So you've said.” There's a rather clever clockworks sitting under a glass bell jar, and it chimes now, marking the hour. “And with that, our time for today is up. I have work I must finish today.” 

“Yes, My Lord.” Ori bows his head respectfully, and takes back his things from where Lord Balin had them set on the table. “Thank you, so very much.” 

Lord Balin waves him off. “Do you know, I think if you were to visit, you could convince Fíli it was time for his midday. Let me give you the address, unless you have some task you must run back to?” 

“No,” Ori says, because if Lord Balin is his master now, then his lessons with Lady Dua are concluded. He never has to see her again, and he's sure the feeling is mutual between them. “No, I don't, not right now.” Which means he might be able to steal away a little bit of time with Fíli. Not much, of course, Fíli must work, and Ori doesn't want to be in his way. But it'll be nice to see him. 

A servant shows him out, and when Ori asks, points him the right way towards Fíli's forge. The shops and houses he passes are as nice as Lord Balin's, or nearly as, and not quite as on top of one another as in Tintown. Everything it very neat and orderly as well, no twisting alleys or hidden doors or split houses, but there's also no one sitting out on their steps and smoking or doing their washing or talking. It's all very quiet. 

Things are just as restrained once he finally finds Fíli's forge. It's little, for somewhere in this neighbourhood, and squashed between an unmarked building and what Ori thinks might be a clothing shop of some sort. Armour, maybe, he thinks. The heavy door is shut, oddly enough. Ori's never seen a forge with it's door shut during working hours.

Maybe Fíli's not in? Deciding to try anyway, Ori pulls the string for the bell and waits, aware of the curtain fluttering in the window on the third floor of the shop next door. Someone, too far away for Ori to really make out, is looking at him, and keeps looking at him. It reminds Ori how out of place he must look, in his common knitted clothes and plain braids. He plays with his sleeves while he waits, wanting to run more every second until the door opens. 

Fíli is shirtless, so that helps just a bit. At first he's frowning, but the moment he sees Ori, his face brightens and he all but pulls him into the well-lit little shop. Fíli is lucky enough to have crystals built into the walls, though nothing like what Ori just saw in Lord Balin's study, to help the lamplight and the banked fire. 

“What are you doing here?” Fíli asks, grabbing a towel off what looks like a workbench and wiping the sweat off his neck and shoulders. “Oh, wait, I forgot, today was your meeting with Balin, wasn't it? How did it go?” 

There's a minute where Ori finds he's paying more attention to the way the lines of Fíli's tattoos mark his skin than what Fíli is saying, but then he catches himself. Unfortunately, so does Fíli, and he grins at Ori arrogantly enough Ori finds something else to look at, even if he can't quite manage to keep a straight face himself. 

“Now, that's not fair,” Fíli says, coming close enough he can grab Ori around the waist and press them together. “You've seen me, and I haven't seen you.” 

“It's not like I've seen all of you,” Ori reminds him. “And you stink.” He smells like Sori after a long day in the shop, the scent of metal, smoke, fire, and sweat mixed together. It's familiar enough it doesn't much bother him, but the face Fíli makes in response is funny. “Actually, it went really well. Lord Balin has made me his student. On scholarship, even! Which my family will be very happy to hear, trust me.” 

Happy, yes, but more importantly, _relieved_. Maybe Nori will even consider coming home soon if he doesn't think he has to earn so much while avoiding Dwalin's eye. 

Fíli frowns, stealing a kiss before letting Ori go. “I'm happy too, you know. I didn't like the sound of Lady Dua, and when Balin told me someone had been having a go at you, I offered to pay him myself -”

“You did _what_?” Ori steps further away, offended.

He holds up a hand. “Peace,” he says. “I knew why I was wrong before I even finished asking. And Kíli's grand idea was to go thrash them.” When Ori doesn't immediately protest again, Fíli frowns and asks, “Would that have actually been better?” 

“More normal,” Ori says, feeling the distance between them and their lives in a way he doesn't like. He pulls at a loose thread on his sleeve, worried he's made things too awkward. 

All Fíli says is, “Damn. I hate it when Kíli is right,” though, and that seems to be the end of it for him. “Suppose Balin thinks this'll encourage me to show up more often. He thinks I'm too distracted by my work. He's not wrong, not really, but there's only so many times I can read about my ancestors before I go as mad as them.” 

Ori shrugs, unsure of whether or not he's offended by that. “I think it's different when your ancestors are kings and queens.” 

“Maybe.” He looks very serious when he's close to the fire, less bright and laughing, more sombre and somewhat regal. Ori's not too sure what he thinks of that either, so he looks away before he works it out. “I was about to head up for midday. Do you want to join me?” 

He hasn't eaten since breakfast, so Ori nods and follows Fíli up the stone steps built out from the wall, to the partially open door that leads into Fíli's living quarters. It's small, obviously meant for maybe two at most, with a little kitchen area and living area, and a wide opening that steps up twice to another room with a bed and a wardrobe, and what looks like a fur laid out on the floor. 

The living area is not nearly so fine as Lord Balin's study, but that's not quite the same. Fíli is nearly Ori's age, but while the room is sparse, what's there is better quality than Ori's own home. There's another fur rug, obviously several skins stitched together, and worse, a soft-looking fur blanket thrown across the sofa. Fíli's hearth is in the centre of the room instead of against a wall, the vents set in the stone and wood of the ceiling above. He has the small sort of sofa Ori thinks is likely a cast-off of someone else, a chair that doesn't match, and a few large floor cushions that match neither one another, or the other furniture. But it's all the sort of old that nice things become, where the pattern fades or it falls out of fashion, but is still obviously good quality. 

The floor beneath Ori's feet is plain stone though, no different from home. 

Fíli has dunked his head under the tap, running the cold water over himself before standing straight and towelling off his hair. He runs a rag under the water, and wipes himself down, while Ori idly watches, not for the first time wondering just what he thinks he's doing. He's still himself, he's rather sure, but who he was even a season ago would never even have dreamed of having Lord Balin as his master, much less finding his mark, and having his mark be...

Be Fíli. _Fíli_. He's thought of his mark so often over the years, but never, _never_ , not in a thousand years, would he ever have thought Mahal believed Ori could be useful to the heir of Thorin Oakenshield. 

He's jarred from these thoughts by Fíli coming up and grabbing him around the waist, tipping Ori's head up so they can kiss. “If I'd known you were coming by, I'd of thought to tidy up a bit,” Fíli says, laughing at himself. “There's hardly ever anyone here but me, and Kíli, and our cousin Gimli.” 

“And now me,” Ori says, pulling away so he can explore a bit more and Fíli can put on a clean shirt. 

“And now you,” Fíli echoes, stepping into his sleeping area and opening his wardrobe. Ori doesn't watch him pull a brown linen shirt over his head, not really. Maybe out of the corner of his eye. Maybe. “I'd like to think you'd come here more often. Stay over, even, if your family allowed it.” 

Ori draws his cardigan tighter around himself by reflex, trying not to smile so big. He fails, and he knows Fíli sees. “I'm not of age, so don't get your hopes up.” 

“But I am, and you nearly are,” Fíli insists, coming back to him. “Where's the harm?” When Ori can't quite answer, Fíli picks up on it, and groans. “They really don't like me, do they?” 

“They don't all dislike you,” he says. “Sori likes you, and so does Samin.” 

“Samin is your law-sister though. And Sori is your youngest sister, she doesn't have any real say.” He's not wrong, so Ori doesn't protest. “It's because of Nori and Dwalin, isn't it?”

There's no point in lying. “It's not just them. Samin is of Durin's line, closer than us, much more. She had a real chance of getting out of Tintown. But she chose to be with Mori, and her family never forgave her. They don't acknowledge her anymore. Especially not after she lost her leg.” Because after that, there was never any chance of Samin reclaiming her place as a dancer. “Mori means well, but she always doubts your sort. I think she believes you'll bed me and drop me as soon as someone gives you a sideways look.” 

Fíli smooths his shirt down, and adjusts his hair. “What about your eldest brother? And his wife?”

“They...” Ori struggles for words to explain without insulting Fíli. “They think I'm too young. And Samin says they think you're too forward.” He shrugs. “We do tend to disappear for hours.” It's foolish, especially with what they get up to whenever they're alone too long, but every time Ori tells himself he's going to put distance between them, for both their sakes, he can never seem to actually force himself to do it. “It's just...” 

Well, it just is what it is, and there's nothing to be done, Ori suspects, nothing except tell them the whole truth and hope for the best. But he doesn't think that will make things any better at all. In fact, he's rather sure they'll want things put to a dead stop until they made up their minds about the whole matter. He doesn't want to give up seeing Fíli, not for a day, not if he doesn't have to. 

“Hey.” He's surprised when Fíli cups his face, kissing him on the temple. “I'm the heir of Thorin Oakenshield. Nothing will keep us apart for long, not it I have anything to say about it. Not now that we're together.”

“I'm not of age,” Ori reminds him. “And you're almost a decade older. And a noble. There's not many who would disagree with them if they decided that they weren't comfortable.” 

“That's not fair!” Fíli protests, turning away from Ori to do seemingly nothing until he spots the hearth. He starts making up the fire, though it's not too cold or too dim in the room. Ori can feel his agitation, but under it, there's a chill that makes his own chest ache. “It's not fair,” he repeats, quieter. “I've been waiting all these years, and we finally find one another, but...”

Ori settles down on one of the floor cushions, arranging his clothes and things about himself. “I'm sorry.” He rubs his sleeve between his fingers, comforted by the familiar soft feel of the weave and the repetitive motion. “If I was older, it wouldn't matter, I know. But I don't even have my mastery, and I know you're angry, but they're my family, and they only want what's best for me. It's just us, you see. We're not like you, I don't have uncles or grandparents or cousins. They're all I have.”

“Is your sire dead too?” It's not an unreasonable question, but Ori hates having it asked all the same. 

“Cines is...” How to describe Cines and not embarrass himself or his mother? “Cines isn't very interested in me.”

“How is a parent not interested in their child?” It must be very strange for Fíli, to hear it, Ori thinks. He has two obviously interested parents, and nobles aren't like his sort. They like having children, like seeing their lines carried on. “You're his _child_.”

“Their child,” Ori corrects. 

Fíli rubs his brow. “Sorry. Was thinking of my own.” The fire is going strong now, so it seems Fíli is at a loss over what to do with his hands. “How can anyone not be proud of having you as their child?” 

That makes Ori colour just a little. “Cines is the sort who wouldn't even be very interested in you, were you their child. It just isn't who they are.” He doesn't want Fíli to pity him or hate Cines, so he continues. “They've not got it in them to be cruel, either, you know. They try. We just don't know what to do with one another. My mother never lived with them, and I think maybe it was all too much for them. My siblings and everything. Lori was still alive then. So there were seven...no, sorry, eight, I forgot Lori's spouse, Dian. I never knew him, you know. Mori wasn't yet married to Samin. So eight, plus my mother, then me after a bit.”

“I can't imagine having so many siblings,” Fíli says. “Why didn't you know your oldest sister's spouse?” 

“Sori says after Lori died, he lost his way.” It's a neat enough way of saying it that gets the point across without having to delve into the sad story any deeper. “What does Kíli's mark say? Maybe I know them?” He only means it to tease and lighten the moment, but Fíli grimaces. “What? What is it?” 

Fíli rests his hip against the thick stones of the hearth, and Ori wonders at how he stands the heat. “You're my mark, Ori, and I think I know you well enough to believe you can keep a secret.” He wants Ori to agree, so Ori nods. It's not as though he can't keep some secret of Fíli's. “You're never to tell anyone, do you understand? No one, not even your siblings.” Again, Ori nods. “Unless you know some Dwarf in the Tin Neighbourhood who writes their name in Sindarin, you don't know Kíli's mark.”

“Oh.” That's all Ori can say. It's not necessarily unheard of someone's mark to be of another race, but Ori's only ever read of one case with a Dwarf who bore an Elf's name, and that was Narvi, so it isn't as though anyone will say much about it. “I won't tell.”

“Didn't think you would,” Fíli says, but Ori can see the relief in his shoulders, and feel it in the soft, cool wave that laps at the edges of his own heart. “But don't bring it up with Kíli unless he does, yeah? Bit of a sore subject for him. Our parents and our uncle all but hit the roof when his mark appeared.” 

Ori bites his lip. “Narvi _was_ the greatest architect...” 

“And Narvi bore Celebrimbor's name,” Fíli finishes, waving his hand as though he's hard it before. “Are you saying Kíli might be the greatest mind of our generation?” 

“Are you saying he's not?” Ori can't help but tease, if only because he loves the way it makes Fíli's eyes crinkle and warm. “You're the Crown Prince, and you're matched to a bastard apprentice from Tintown.” He's never had cause to use the word, _bastard_ , much as it applies to him. No one in Tintown would ever mind enough to bother.

But nobles mind, he knows. Nobles mind when only one parent will acknowledge the child. Nobles mind the family lines. Nobles mind when direct family members have law marks. “Do I really have to meet your family soon?” Ori asks, wondering if maybe he could change Fíli's mind, if only for a little while longer. 

“Afraid so,” Fíli answers, sighing through his teeth. “I managed to tell them the worst of it without too much trouble. They know how young you are, and that you're from the Tin Neighbourhood.” His mouth quirks down. “And Thorin told them about how Nori is your brother before I could stop him. He thought it was best they had the whole of it, instead of finding out later. He wasn't wrong. Mum isn't the most forgiving when she thinks someone's been building the sand around her, but it wasn't his to tell either. I'm sorry.” 

He really thinks Ori is going to be offended, Ori sees. “I don't think I'm actually allowed to have secrets from the king, or the princess,” he says, puzzled over the idea of being angry at the legendary Thorin Oakenshield. He knows Fíli must have had some practice at it over the years, but Ori is still getting used to the idea of Thorin Oakenshield being an actual _person_. “And I'm not ashamed of Nori. He does what he does for our family. I won't say I'm proud of him, but he's never done wrong by us, not if he could help it.” That might not all be completely true, of course, but Ori has to stick up for Nori, if nothing else. No matter what happens, Nori did what he did for the family, and Ori isn't so selfish he'll not always acknowledge that. 

Fíli looks at him for too long, far too long, before he says, “I couldn't have done what he did. The moment I heard you say your name, the second I touched you...I wanted you so much. I could never have been able to pretend, to walk away. I don't know where he found the strength.”

That's not what Ori expected him to say, and he meets Fíli's eyes again, feeling that all-encompassing pull, that need to know every line of Fíli's body, every shade of blue his eyes could be, every tone and every word Fíli might speak. “I don't either,” he says. “Because he loves Dwalin so much, you know. He really does.” And Ori doesn't know that he loves Fíli just yet, but he still cannot manage to break away.

When Fíli kneels down on the floor and cups Ori's face, Ori wraps his arms around Fíli in turn, kisses him when Fíli comes close. They're supposed to be taking their midday, he thinks distantly, as they settle their bodies together across the floor cushions. And Fíli just washed up. 

“I can take the rest of the day,” Fíli whispers against Ori's mouth, as though there's anyone else to overhear. “Just stay with me. As long as you can. Just stay.”

Ori is not Nori, and he doesn't have the strength to say _no_ , so he doesn't. He doesn't, and eventually, Fíli rises off of him, and pulls Ori to his feet, and they find their way to the bed. It's big, much bigger than Ori's own, and there's plenty of room for them both, after they work their way out of their clothes.

He's never been naked with anyone but his family, and he's nervous when he's finally out of all of his clothes. He knows Fíli wants him, and he wants Fíli too, but there's still that fear, despite everything between them. But after a moment, he realises it's not just his own emotions he's feeling. Fíli is anxious too, worried over how Ori will see him. Everything he's feeling is the two of them, intertwining and knotting up together, lovely and more than he ever thought it could be. 

They're not out in the open now, they're not in any danger of discovery or threat, and Ori finds how easy it is to be loud, to ask for what he wants, to respond to what he likes. The bed and the room and the little flat feel as safe as a nest, as a mountain kingdom all their own. 

The clock becomes an afterthought, a nonsense worry at the back of Ori's mind, as in between bouts, Fíli talks about Ori coming over, the two of them talking about chores and wants and needs, and maybe one day, Ori living here, in this little flat, in this bed that could be _theirs_ , and building a whole life for the two of them. 

They remember to eat after a bit, Fíli finding some dark bread and pears and cold chicken. There's wine too, which Ori is rarely allowed to have at home. Fíli plays with Ori's bracelet a few times, pushing it back so he can read his own name in Ori's skin, trace the letters. When he goes to put the mostly empty dishes back in the kitchen, he stops at the desk against the wall on the way back. He falls back into the bed with Ori and silently asks if he can undo the knot of the bracelet. Ori lets him, and Fíli shows Ori what he must have grabbed from the desk: a set of beads, made from silver and a blue stone. “It's called lapis lazuli,” Fíli says. “These are from my formal set.” With that, he undoes some of the strings of Ori's bracelet, and weaves the beads in, then secures the knots again. He offers it back to Ori, smiling in that confused way when Ori hesitates. “For you. A proper courting present. So your family isn't so worried, and my parents don't murder me for not doing things the proper way.” 

The truth is, Ori has never really owned anything very pretty. The finest thing he owns is the hair clip Sori had given him, and even that's not so pretty as these. “Don't you need them, if they're a part of your formal set?” 

“There's six in all. I only need two for my moustache and two for my hair, really. And this way, we can match when you meet my family.” 

Ori puts it back on, and despite his misgivings over having them, he likes how pretty they are. “It's not very expensive, is it?” 

“Why do you care?” Fíli laughs, playing with the bracelet again, the pads of his fingers rough against the inside of Ori's wrist. 

“Because I'm an apprentice scribe from Tintown, and no one is going to believe I came by them honestly if they're expensive.” He hates even having to explain it, the creep of embarrassment warming the back of his neck. Fíli lives in the Steel District, where people wear axes and pretty gems all the time, openly. Dori and Adjoa tell him Ered Luin was little better than a tent city when their people arrived, but they've had a century and more to change that. Fíli and him might live under the same stone, but they live in entirely different worlds. “Fíli, I know you mean well, but someone like me, with something very pretty? Someone will think I stole them.” 

Fíli doesn't laugh at that. Instead, he raises Ori's wrist up, and presses his mouth against the skin and the bracelet. “I'm sorry,” he apologises. “I wasn't thinking. They're not exactly rare though, so no worries there. My father chose them more for the colour. See how they're blue, but they look a bit like they've got gold shot through them?” When Ori holds his wrist up to the light, he can see what Fíli means. “My father is rather sentimental, you'll find, whereas my mother doesn't have a sentimental bone in her body.” 

“Which one are you more like?” Ori asks, satisfied with the answer about the beads. If they're not very rare or expensive, then he has nothing to worry about, and he can admire them freely. “Your mother or your father?” 

“I'm myself,” Fíli answers, more defensive than Ori expects. “Don't ask me to compare myself to them. I hate that. Everyone does it.” He huffs and rolls to his back, settling an arm under his head. Unlike Ori, he seems completely comfortable when he's naked. Ori still has the blanket drawn up over him a bit, and looking at Fíli still makes his face a little warm. “I hate that everyone wants me to be them. No one ever sees me as simply myself.” 

Ori leans over to kiss him, closing his own eyes so he doesn't have to meet Fíli's. “Well, I don't know them. I know you. So I only know you as yourself.” He hitches a shoulder as he pulls back, embarrassed that he might be overestimating his own worth to Fíli in this. “If that helps to hear, that is.” 

“You have no idea,” Fíli breathes, cupping the back of Ori's neck and drawing him down for more kisses. “Everyone told me to worry about you. That you might seek me out for position. But you never even knew my name. And all you see me as is Fíli.” His mouth on Ori's is a bit wet, their lips catching against one another's. It's a curious thing to notice, Ori thinks, but he does notice, either way. “I searched for you, truly. And much as I talk, I have to admit I was too arrogant to even consider the Tin Neighbourhood. I didn't even think it below my notice. I never even thought of it all.”

It's not as though Ori can blame him. Were he the heir of the king, he would never think to look so far below his own station for his match. “To be fair, I never though to look in the Steel District. I never once thought you'd be a nob.”

“Is it an insult, when you say that? 'Nob'? Your sister made it sound like one.”

Ori frowns. “It's not an insult, exactly. But I guess it's not very nice, either.” He settles across Fíli's chest when Fíli encourages him down. “It's not that we don't like nobles, you know. Everyone loves Thorin Oakenshield. _Everyone_.”

“But the rest of us?” Fíli asks. 

“Well, your purses are heavy, and no one can dislike that.”

That makes Fíli laugh and roll them over, and their words are gone for the time being.

They've been at one another twice more that the big clock sounds throughout the neighbourhood and Ori comes back to reality. The big clock chimes the supper hour, long past when Ori should have been home, and he starts up out of the bed and Fíli's arms, searching for his clothes frantically. “They'll know,” he explains, pulling on his cardigan and smoothing it down, “They'll know, and they'll be so upset, Fíli, you have no idea -”

“Your shoes,” Fíli has found them and now he brings them over to Ori. “Look, just tell them Balin kept you late.” 

“You want me to lie?” 

Fíli kisses him quickly. “I want to be allowed to see you again, is all, my heart.”

At the endearment, Ori blushes, but he gets his shoes on, and hurries off. Fíli offers to walk him, but Ori doesn't have the time to wait for him to get dressed. He'll be lucky if they accept him coming home so late already. If he's very lucky, everyone will still be at their respective jobs and he'll have time to get cleaned up. Then hopefully, they'll be so pleased by the news about Lord Balin, they'll forget to ask too many questions. 

The money they'll save...Ori can barely believe it. He counts out the fare carefully for the trolley, and slips the two remaining coins into the little pocket inside his sleeve while he finds a seat. There's a spot on the bench in the back where he's out of the way, though the other riders aren't much better dressed than him. Servants and shop attendants and apprentices, if he had to guess. 

The two little coins left are the last of the little bit of money he earned the last time he helped out around Sori's forge, and likely the last pocket money he'll have until he's needed again. But it's not a long walk from Lord Balin's home to Fíli's. If he's careful, this could be the start of many visits.

He'd almost forgotten, but he'll have to find a way to get back to Fíli's neighbourhood on another day, won't he? Fíli's parents are expecting to meet him very soon. Maybe he can convince Sori to lend him some money if he does her chores for a little while. Oh, but she'll want to know why, won't she? And then she'll start asking about Fíli's family, and Ori really doesn't know enough about how nobles work to tell a convincing enough lie, one that will make it past Samin if she hears it. 

Nervous, he starts playing with his bracelet, rubbing the two new beads between the pads of his fingers. Maybe he could sell something for a little extra. What does he own though? His little box of pens and nibs and inks, and parting with that is unthinkable. The hair clip Sori had given him? No, she'd know it was gone sooner or later, and her feelings would be hurt beyond recovery at the discovery. Besides that, it was a gift, not only to him, but to her. To give up something Jin, Sori's sire, had purchased with such meaning tears at Ori's heart. 

He has nothing, he thinks, sighing to himself. He'll have to hope Sori can keep a secret again, and put herself in her debt. 

It's with great luck he makes it home to an empty house, and he runs his hands through his hair in relief. It's not his day to work, in any case, so he closes off the kitchen and heats up some water so he can have a wash before anyone does come home. He appreciates the hot water on his scalp and his spine, and enjoys the moment of privacy he's so rarely given in a full house. Outside the kitchen doors, he hears Samin come home, followed by Sori, but they must see his things hanging on the hook and know it's him shut away, because they stay out. His siblings might find his modesty a bit funny, but they've never disrespected it. 

After he's clean, he dresses himself in his nightshirt and loose trousers, lying his clothes amongst the ones in the pile to be washed. They don't smell of horse or sex, only the street and maybe a bit smoky from the fires of Fíli's forge, so no one will have cause to be suspicious. 

His sisters, now including Mori, are all sitting around the hearth, doing various chores. Mori is mending the curtains, the heavy bolt of cloth laid across her lap like a skirt, while Sori works at the tools for mending the fire. Samin is in her chair, binding bundles of the last of the year's basil with twine for drying. They are so familiar, it hurts when he thinks of what he was imagining earlier with Fíli. How can he leave them? How can he even think of abandoning his family? Of leaving this warm, familiar, place? 

He sits beside Samin in her chair and rests his head against her knee. She hums some nonsense sound, and strokes his hair for a moment before going back to her task, and for a few minutes, Ori lets everything stay as it is. But only for a few minutes. 

“Lord Balin offered to take me in on scholarship as his apprentice,” he says, breaking up the quiet.

“What?” Sori asks, at the same time Mori asks, “Why?” Samin's hand settles in his hair more solidly, and he knows she's looking at his other sisters and him. 

“You know why,” Ori answers, because he doesn't feel like lying just yet. This way, they can make their own explanations, fill in the blanks, and he can just nod along. “It's four days a week. All I need are my supplies and trolley fare.” 

Mori swears loudly and explicitly, mostly in Khuzdul, then falls back into Common proper. “If he thinks this'll make Nori feel obligated, I'll kill him, the stupid old bastard.” 

“That's not it,” Ori tries, but none of them seem to hear, and he hates that he's disturbed their peaceful little home. That things are changing here too, not just outside, in his secret places, or in Fíli's forge. Again, he's the cause of upheaval in their house. He's made things different. 

“Likely trying to get it all under control,” Sori says. “If the Captain really did go after Nori, Lord Balin is wanting to make our family a little more palatable to the rest of the nobs.” 

“Can't have a law-brother from Tintown with a record,” Mori replies harshly. 

“I think he's just....trying to help.” It might not be for the purist reasons, but Ori believes he at least means well. “If nothing else, think of the money. And I'll be able to spend hours with him, four days a week.”

Sori sighs. “Four days you'll need trolley fare and your luncheon, but that's nothing compared to what that nasty tunnel-rat has been charging for the past few years. More money to go towards...” she hitches her chin at nothing, or everything. “Well, maybe we can get some new furniture. And maybe Nori will come home.” 

He puts the tea on for his sisters, and Mori and Samin both have a cup before they leave for the restaurant. Sori goes with them to get her and Ori's dinner, and likely a drink or two as well. Ori goes to his room while he waits, his little window open to let in the sounds of the street and the cool air while he draws out the new design for his ceiling. He'd sanded it down the day before last, taking away the old chipped and faded paint. He wants to paint the water this time, instead of the stars, the image of the sunlight on the river and the soft, muted sounds when he was submerged prominent now. 

The primer is the first to go on, of course, and he tests the wood as he does, making sure no areas need to be patched. He was almost sure there was nothing when he sanded it, but better safe than sorry. While he waits for it to dry, he straightens up his room, and finds the pretty box Nori had sent for his birthday. He'd forgotten it somehow. Happily distracted, he admires the pieces of glass, and hinks to make some of them into a sun-catcher, along with some pretty shells, so it can be a proper chime as well. He can hang it at his favourite spot. 

The idea comes like a bolt, and he smiles, pleased he's found a solution. He'll make the first for practice and the second for Fíli, so he can hang it in the flat. It can be his gift in exchange for the beads on his bracelet. Perhaps he can even give a few pieces to Fíli plain, and have Fíli shape them into jewellery. The fogged greens and blues would look very nice in Fíli's hair. 

Idly, Ori holds up a piece to one of his own braids to see if they'd look nice in his too. “Not too bad,” he says aloud, but he's still disappointed in how his hair refuses to simply choose a shade. It makes everything difficult. Curious, he holds his wrist up against his hair next, seeing the lapis lazuli beads against the colour. His hair doesn't do much for the stone, but the stones are still very pretty, and he settles back against his pillow to study them closer. 

Only when he moves his head, he hears the crinkle of paper, and just as he forgot the glass, he realizes he entirely forgot the letter. He brings out Nori's letter, the paper worn fro being under his pillow for so long. He's guilty he forgot, but at the same time eager to read what Nori has to say. 

He's less eager the more he reads, and learns that Captain Dwalin has indeed left the settlement to be with Nori. Nori writes that Dwalin might stay a bit longer than he should, as the summer storms disrupt Nori's work. That Nori and the ship cannot venture far for the time being, and Dwalin has been staying close as well, at least until he's needed back. 

It's all very upsetting, and has him hurting for Nori, until he reads, _Fíli, heir to Thorin Oakenshield? As Mama said, we could not be so pretty for nothing. You've been outed, little love. Blame Captain Dwalin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, finally.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I live! Huzzah! Been going through some rough stuff, trying to get back on track with writing. Hopefully the next thing to update is _Until You See The Light_ , since that's long overdue. 
> 
> A note to be patient with Fíli's parents in this.

“What do you think mine says?” 

Fíli looks over at Kíli from the hearth, and shrugs. “I didn't magically learn Sindarin since the last time you asked. And besides, Balin says it's probably written in the old way of theirs, so even if I could read bloody Sindarin, I still wouldn't know.” He throws in a bundle of sweet-smelling herbs, and buries them under the wood so they'll burn quick. 

“Why are you always such a prat?” Kíli asks, throwing himself down on Fíli's bed. 

“I haven't had those cleaned since the last time Ori and me had sex,” Fíli tells him, grabbing an apple off the table and taking a bite. He mostly says it for the way Kíli trips over himself trying to get off the bed, managing to catch his boot in one trailing blanket and tangle himself up enough he lands on his arse on the floor. “Want an apple?”

Kíli jumps down the step from Fíli's sleeping area with a deliberately hard stomp, and grabs a bottle of wine off the table instead. “Did you go to market yourself?” he asks, looking around. 

“It's not that difficult,” Fíli replies, feeling a bit insulted. He's perfectly capable of caring for himself no matter what anyone thinks. “Wanted to get some things special, any way.” In truth, he hadn't actually had any intention of doing it, until he spotted the stalls selling fresh berries, and thought Ori might like some tomorrow during their midday from their lessons. It's more a bribe than anything else, since after tomorrow night, Ori is likely never going to want to see him again. “Who do you think is going to be worse?”

“At the dinner?” Kíli uncorks the bottle and takes a swig directly from it before passing it to Fíli. “Well, Mum's settled down now that she's had some time to beat some metal and rant about how irresponsible you are.” That sounds like their mother. Her temper burns hot, but once she's shouted herself out, things are usually fine. “Da, on the other hand...you know how he is. He's started doing that thing where he braids his beard up and he keeps asking me about Ori.” 

It's bad manners, but Fíli bought the wine, so he keeps the bottle for himself now, sitting down on one of the floor cushions. “I swear, Kíli, if you wind anyone up or try to make things worse, I'll tell everyone in Ered Luin you have an Elf's name.” 

“You wouldn't do that,” Kíli protests. 

“Try me,” Fíli challenges, offering the bottle to his brother. “What about Uncle? He seems all right with it.”

“Who knows with him?” That's true enough. Thorin is about as easy to read as the letters on Kíli's wrist most of the time. “I don't think he'll say anything to make things uncomfortable. He's too loyal to Dwalin, and since Dwalin just got back from a mysterious little holiday with that charm on Grasper...” He waggles his eyebrows. “Do you think Nori, son of Spyros, has red hair, perhaps?”

“He could have waited another week to return,” Fíli says, a little too unkindly for his own comfort, but he doesn't want to take it back either. “Has Adad seen it?” Kíli's sympathetic look answers that question. “Damn. He'll be beside himself for a month thinking I'm going to take off too.” 

“What, is Ori going to run away to be a smuggler?” He laughs, but Fíli just takes another swig of the bottle. 

He might have laughed too, back when he first met Ori, but now that Fíli knows him better, he can see the parts of him that he shares with Nori. Ori lies easily enough, even if he probably would protest them being called outright lies, and as far as Fíli knows, he's managed to keep Fíli's official title and the true depth of their relationship hidden from his family. It's admirable, but also a little worrying. If he can hide from people who know him so well, what can he still be hiding from Fíli?

Kíli kicks his ankle, startling him from the dark turn his thoughts had started on. “I know you think you look really mysterious and stuff when you do that, but you really just look like an angry cat.”

“Better than a sheepdog.” It's only midday, and already Kíli's braids have unravelled, the only piece still in the clip that had been Frerin's once, a lifetime ago, and Fíli thinks that one only manages to survive because Kíli would lose a finger before the clip. “He just seems to think our family is rather grand, or something, and I know he's going to be intimidated by them already.”

“We're intimidated by them,” Kíli mutters, taking his turn with the bottle. “Least I am, because I still have to live with the lot of them. Still don't see why I can't live with you. We've always shared just fine.” 

Fíli stands up, the apple core in hand, still hungry, and throws it into the fire. “Not having to listen to your snoring is one of the best parts,” he says, watching the core burn for a minute. “Besides, I don't want you hanging around when Ori comes over, do I?” 

“Yeah, might want to remind him to keep that quiet,” Kíli says. “I know Balin thinks it's funny, but that's because he thinks we're still fifty and you two are just...” He waves a hand while he takes a drink. “Mum isn't nearly that blind, and she'll go spare. You're the _responsible_ one, after all.” 

There's fresh bread on the table, so Fíli cuts himself a piece and pours a little honey on it. Ori had said he liked honey, so Fíli had bought two jars, since they were cheap this time of year, when everything was blooming. “Lucky me, I got to be born first.” He glances at his brother, and shakes his head to himself. “You ever worked with sea glass?” 

“Yeah,” he answers, sitting up. “A few times, for little fiddly pieces. Why?” 

“Ori brought some.” Fíli finds the little wrapped handkerchief Ori had brought over, and shows Kíli. “He doesn't do metalwork, not really, so he says he can't do much with it for me.” 

Kíli doesn't tease, not yet at least, just looks over the pieces, likely checking just how solid they are to judge from how he's rolling the pieces between his fingers. “I can make it into smaller pieces for you, but it's no good for jewellery. It would shatter if I tried to do too much.” He holds one of the dark green pieces up, with the fire behind it. “I could do a few things, I think. I'd have to ask Da what he thinks.” He turns it, and it flashes. “Actually, Gimli might have some ideas. He's getting really good at this sort of thing, you know.”

“Probably because he practises,” Fíli says, an insult towards himself and Kíli both that has his brother grinning. “Do you think you could set it so it could be woven into a charm?” Ori always has scraps of thread and ribbon braided into bracelets, or in his hair, or marking places in the workbooks Balin has them use. If Kíli or Gimli could set the stones in something, Fíli could ask Ori to make him a charm for one of his own weapons. 

“You've become so disgustingly soppy,” Kíli laughs, wrapping the piece of sea glass back up with the others. “So...I'm guessing you haven't told Ori about Thorin's offer?” 

“It's only two months at most, and it's good pay,” Fíli replies, taking back the bottle of wine so he can pour himself a proper cup now. 

“Going to take that as a _no_.” Kíli is giving him a look, but Fíli doesn't see why. 

“I was going to wait until after all the plans were settled,” he defends himself anyway, because much as he hates to admit it, Kíli is usually a better judge of this sort of thing, and if he's giving Fíli that look, he has a reason. “I don't want to spoil things, not so soon.” 

He's gave Ori the two beads from his formal set almost a fortnight ago, and Ori is still wearing them on his bracelet, and still covering his mark up for that matter. Fíli still thinks the secret is for the best, but there's...well, there's something about Ori that seems to inspire people to look at him, something sweet and soft and earnest, even when he's talking with Balin about the symbolism in the ballads so passionately his face gets red and Fíli is completely lost, and honestly somewhat disinterested in the subject. When they're taking their midday now, people who are long past taking notice of Fíli and Kíli as Thorin's heirs are suddenly watching the three of them and it rankles Fíli. In the Steel District, no one approaches, but when he and Ori are alone, Ori talks about his day, and complains about the people who come to his family's restaurant and flirt and make him uncomfortable. 

But he's not sure he has the right to demand Ori show his mark openly now, and wear Fíli's beads in proper braids. He doesn't want to push Ori away by being too greedy too quick. At the same time though, with Thorin's offer, he hates the idea of leaving the settlement without having some kind of promise from Ori. It's not as though he thinks Ori would break faith with Fíli, only that Fíli doesn't trust anyone else in the damn place. And besides that, his name would give Ori some measure of protection from the idiots he used to study with. One of them has shown his face around Ori's neighbourhood, supposedly. Fíli doesn't like the sound of that. 

Again though, he doesn't think pushing is a good idea. 

It's too much to think about all at once, so he turns the subject back to Kíli. “Are you going to take the offer?” 

“Anything to get away from Amad and Adad,” Kíli replies, eyeing the berries on the table. He looks up at Fíli, eyebrows raised hopefully, but doesn't reach for any when Fíli glares. “Besides, it's good pay. And we'll be with Thorin and Dwalin! It'll be fun, I think. We won't be freezing to death, at least.” 

That's true. Fíli hates taking outside work during the autumn and winter, when they can bed down for the night in the tents and wake up to chest-high snow, or have to guard their clients and their cargo through ice storms and mudslides. Summer work is the best work. Even when it rains, it's not too bad. Summer trade is high-paying too. Fíli will have a heavy purse after, enough he won't have to worry about anything for a time, and he can give some back to his parents' household. 

He needs to get his travelling clothes back out, and find all his light armour. He knows he has a good set of leather vambraces somewhere amongst his things, and boiled leathers are far better in the summer heat than his brigandine. “Are Amad and Da really that bad now?” 

“They're not better, that's for sure,” Kíli says. “They were still hacked off at you for leaving the house in the first place, then they found out about us leaving the mountain by ourselves, which, by the way, thanks for that, and then you of course had to have a very inconvenient match.” 

“What's going on between Dwalin and Nori isn't our fault.” He's already said it, but it bears repeating. “Did Thorin tell you how far east we were going this time?” 

“South-east, actually. We're accompanying some of the merchants from the coast, and they're going to sell their goods further inland again. I think they're the same group we went with last year. I don't know, I wasn't listening too close after a bit. Uncle and Dwalin started arguing about whether or not it was worth it to take the ponies or not, after last time.” 

Fíli thinks about it for a moment, then shakes his head. “I'm not taking Ivy this year. Not after last summer.” Ivy is a pretty pony, and clever. It had hardly taken any time at all before Fíli had her trained, and she's gentle besides. Some of the merchants had taken a liking to her, too much of a liking, and had attempted to steal her away with their own ponies. Fíli had walked, or limped, away from that one with an interesting new scar on his hip, whereas Ivy had gotten upset anytime he was out of her sight for more than a few minutes for most of the trip home. “I'll just travel lighter this year. We always pass through enough towns it's not much trouble.” 

“Ivy will be cross if she doesn't see you for two months. She might try and bite you again. Remember when you left her for a fortnight last winter, and she tried to eat your hair when you got back?” 

“She's never bitten me,” Fíli protests. “She nipped me, is all.” And that was after Fíli had managed to cajole the sulking pony into coming over to see him. She had finally come close, and starting snuffing his hair, giving him hope, until she nipped his ear and snorted in his face. It had taken half a bag of boiled sugar candies and a few hours being allowed to run outside and roll in the grass before she started to forgive him. “Ori could take her out while I'm gone. She likes him, and he's getting really good at riding her without me.”

“Yeah, but aren't you always there too?” Kíli is still giving him that look. “And I hate to be the one to point out yet another obvious problem, but how exactly are you going to phrase that? 'Sorry Ori, I'm dropping everything and leaving for two months, will you watch my horse?'” 

“It's just two months, _at most_ ,” Fíli says, trying to convince himself more than anything. “He's got his new lessons with Balin, and he works in his family's shop too, and he told me he's going to have to help with some things in the forge his sister works in. He's going to be too busy to miss me.” Well, Fíli hopes he's not _that_ busy, but this how he's justifying this to himself. Ori won't be upset about Fíli leaving for work, he doesn't think. 

He hopes. 

By the time the next evening rolls around, Fíli still hasn't told him about the trip. Ori is wearing the same clothes he had on his birthday, probably the nicest things he owns, along with the hair clip Fíli saw before, and the thread bracelet with Fíli's two beads. While Fíli gets himself dressed, Ori sits on one of the floor cushions, tugging on the bracelet and not saying anything at all. He hadn't even wanted to eat anything Fíli had put out, not even the honey. Fíli had tried to tempt him with some of the sweet wine he'd bought, thinking it would help his nerves, but Ori had refused that too. 

“Damn it,” Fíli swears aloud and tries to redo the laces of his vest. He can never seem to get them perfect. 

Ori stands up now and comes to stand in front of Fíli, taking over. His fingers are steady now they have a task, so Fíli lets him. Besides, Ori's braids and laces are always neat until Fíli makes them less neat. “You're too old to not know how to do your laces,” Ori says quietly. “It's a good thing you don't live with your parents. I bet they wouldn't let you out looking shabby.” 

“You've met Kíli,” Fíli reminds him. “See, our Da? He's always real tidy, like you and your family. But my mum and my uncle and Kíli, well, we just rely on our good looks.” 

“The title helps,” Ori says very quietly and very dryly. He dares look up at Fíli through his lashes, and finally, for the first time all day, looks like himself. Fíli has to lean down, knocking their temples together. They stand like that for a long time, Fíli clasping one on Ori's elbows with one hand and cupping his face with the other, while Ori's fingers stay on the laces of Fíli's vest. 

No one could ever really explain how it would feel, to find his mark. For the longest time, he could feel Ori, just at the edge of his vision, but it was like trying to chase a shadow. The moment he shone light on it to see better, it was gone. Now that he has Ori though, there's no more shadows. 

There shouldn't be deception either, he admits to himself. “My uncle has offered me a place as a hired guard for a merchant caravan.” 

Ori looks up at him fully, drawing back a little. “What?”

“I told you, we take this sort of work a lot,” Fíli says hurriedly. “Men always like hiring Dwarves, you know that. This group is a mix, and they always hire from here. They pay well.” 

“How long will you be gone?” 

Suddenly, two months doesn't seem so short a time. “It's supposed to just be a month, but sometimes the weather gets in the way, or the trade lasts longer, so it could be as long as two months.” Ori isn't looking at him anymore, just playing with the bracelet, so Fíli gets it all over with. “I'd be leaving at the end of this month.”

“Oh.” He's stepped back, still playing with the bracelet. 

“It's good money,” Fíli says, not liking how guilty he feels. He shouldn't feel guilty. He's not doing anything wrong. The more money he makes, the better off he is, and Ori in turn, if Ori chooses to share a household with Fíli after he comes of age. “And the more jobs I take, the more offers I'll get, even better-paying jobs!”

“But you'd be leaving the settlement. I thought you were an armourer, not a soldier.” It doesn't sound like an accusation, or like he's angry, and Fíli cannot feel any of those emotions from him. Everything from Ori feels muddled now, and Fíli doesn't know what to do. “It's good money? And it's not dangerous?”

“Really good money,” Fíli answers. “And no, it shouldn't be. Things happen, but the roads are good between here and where they're going, and it's a large party.” The hour chimes, and they both look towards the window. “Could we put a hold on this? Only, we need to leave if we're going to arrive before my mother starts to think she's being slighted.” 

Ori turns a little pink, and Fíli feels the flush of embarrassment and worry bleeding into his own mind. “So we should....we should....go meet your mother.” 

“In all honesty, you need to be more worried about my father right now.” He means it as a joke, but Ori doesn't look all that relieved. “If it helps, there will be some good food, and some very fine wine.” 

The moment Fíli opens the door to the family home for Ori, and sees his mother standing there with her braids clasped in in the abalone shell clips and the sapphire piercing just below her lip, he starts to wish for a whole bottle of some very fine wine, just for him, so he can be good and drunk. 

His mother is an imposing figure all on her own, even if she wasn't the princess. Dís is a tall Dwarf, taller than even their Uncle Thorin, even if by just a finger or two, and broad-shouldered as well, with wide hips and a strong waist. Her black hair and beard are both thick, and while she wears her beard short in mourning, as does Thorin, her hair is long, and the silver that shoots through both only emphasizes the colour, especially when braided so finely and held with the abalone clasps. She's done it on purpose, Fíli knows she has. His mother loves to intimidate.

His father has a red hue to his light hair, a pretty enough colour, but his is far finer than their mother's hair, and turns to more complicated braids much easier. His hair is done up very well today, with his rose-gold beads, that make his hair shine. He's not nearly as intimidating as Dís, but Vimli is no one to look down on either.

Fíli hates them both very much when he sees how Ori ducks his head, and feels the white-hot dart of embarrassment and shame that cuts through. He hates that Ori feels lesser-than, for even a moment. 

But then his mother steps forward, smiling, and bypasses Fíli to look at Ori. “Ori,” Dís greets, taking both of Ori's hands in hers. “What lovely ribbons you're wearing. I understand one of your sisters is a very talented seamstress. Are they a gift from her?” 

“Yes, they were,” Ori replies, looking up. “There was a wedding that was all purple, and these were leftovers.”

Dís reaches up and touches one braid framing Ori's face. “Are these your family braids?”

“Yes,” he answers, nodding, but doesn't say anything else, and the conversation falters almost to a complete stop. 

Thankfully, or perhaps not, Kíli comes in with Thorin and Dwalin on his heels. Kíli's hair doesn't look any better than it did yesterday, and Fíli catches their father's wince at the sight of him. Thorin has his long hair mostly loose as well, but his beard is neatly braided, and Dwalin's hair and beard look well-brushed for once. 

Dwalin hitches his chin at Ori in greeting. Ori's face gets a bit redder. “Hello, Captain,” he manages, but then he looks at Thorin, and all the blood rushes from his face so fast Fíli worries a bit, because it cannot be healthy. 

Thorin doesn't seem to have noticed yet, adjusting his sleeves and saying something about the potato crops to Dís. But when he does look over at Ori, he smiles, and comes closer. “It's good to meet you at last, Ori, son of Cines.” 

“Your Majesty,” Ori returns, his voice shaking. He's clinging to Fíli's arm like a lifeline now, and not looking up once. He's completely closed off to Fíli even, and even with their bond so new still, it feels as though he's slammed a door shut between them.

Gently, he taps his head against Ori's, his mouth just over the shell of Ori's ear. “You should hear him sing when he's been drinking. Dwalin can always convince him and Mum to sing the bawdiest things.” It's the first thing he can think of to make Thorin seem more real to Ori, and thankfully it works, because now he can feel Ori again, the barest touch of worry and anxiety. “They're rather good, actually, as a chorus.”

Dís clicks her tongue. “Don't you start filling his head with nonsense, Fíli, or I'll remember some stories to tell him about you.” When Kíli laughs, she turns her glare on him. “I don't know what you're finding so funny, since most of the stories involve you as well. I'm sure Ori would find the one about you two and the doves very amusing.” 

“Doves?” Ori is looking between him and Kíli both, obviously confused. “What happened?” 

“I'll tell you later,” Fíli promises, already trying to think of a way to tell the damn story that puts the blame mostly on Kíli, where it belongs. “As for now, I'm hungry, Adad, as is everyone else, I'm sure.”

“I could stand to eat,” Dwalin says, and Thorin looks agreeable as well.

Vimli purses his lips. “Of course. Let's move along, then.” 

Someone planned the meal with the intention of impressing; they've even laid out the nicer dishes and they've been polished almost to a mirror sheen. Kíli makes a face at Fíli, that neither of their parents catch, thankfully. When they sit, Thorin is given the head of the table automatically, with Dwalin at his right and Dís at his left. Fíli sits beside Dwalin without thinking, but Kíli gives up his usual place beside Fíli for Ori, instead sitting at the end of the table. Ori looks relieved, not that Fíli blames him. When he'd been in Ori's house, he'd been nervous about being seated by any of his siblings, especially not Mori. 

“Hey, Fíli,” Kíli gets his attention by waving a knife at him, right in front of Ori's face. “Remember that song Uncle taught us -”

“If you even think about tossing around the dishes, I'll have you both up by your braids before you can manage the first verse, am I understood?” Their father eyes them both quickly, and then turns his gaze to the rest of the table. “And you all know I will.” 

“Save your threats,” Dwalin dismisses, pouring himself a glass of wine from the pitcher at their end of the table. “We'll not dent your pretty dishes, Vimli.” He takes a long sip, and adds, “Not when there's food to put on them still.” 

Kíli is pouring himself a generous glass from the other pitcher, but he pours one for Ori too, then hands it off to Fíli. “I bet you know the song, Ori. 'Blunt the Knives'?”

“You know that song?” Ori looks more surprised than he should, and he actually turns towards Thorin, Dwalin, and Dís to ask, “How do you know that song?” 

“What's wrong with it?” Vimli asks, over a much smaller cup of wine. He and Kíli both look as lost as Fíli feels, but then their mother makes an awkward sort of noise, and Thorin is smiling to himself. Vimli looks at the three of them and says, “Please tell me that song doesn't have some sort of rude meaning to it?” 

Ori takes a sip of his wine first, and bites his lip before he says, hesitantly, “It's not...rude, or anything like that. But...'Blunt the Knives' is hush-work song. People sing it as a sort of...code, I guess, 'cause it's kind of like a password. If you know all the words, everyone knows you're like them. I've never heard of any nobles knowing the words.” 

“Hush-work?” Fíli's never heard the term before in his life, but it's obvious his uncle, his mother and Dwalin do. “What is that?”

“Hush-work, my love, as in work you only talk about in whispers,” Dís answers when Ori falls quiet and hides behind his wine. “Gambling, cheating, smuggling, and burglary. That sort of thing. I imagine Ori knows all the words to that song, don't you?” 

Insulting as it is, Fíli is rather sure the comment is aimed more at Dwalin than it is at Ori. It makes Ori bristle beside him, but he doesn't reply. He doesn't have time; Dwalin speaks first. “Something you need to get off your chest, Dís?” 

“Best start eating, lads, I think the evening might be taking a bad turn,” Vimli says quietly, taking the cloth off the basket with the bread in it. “Dís, my gem, perhaps this is not the time or place to have this discussion.” 

As always, his mother is already on a set course and cannot be turned easily. “You cannot just leave the settlement to chase down a smuggler that's spent half your lives deceiving you, which I still don't understand how anyone could be so stupid -”

Ori's hands are shaking against the table, so Fíli reaches over and laces their fingers together, trying to help him stay calm. It seems to help, Ori taking a few breaths, but he's still shaking. “You don't know him," he says, "You don't know my brother at all. He didn't even tell Dwalin, he was never going to tell Dwalin, I did, by accident one night.” 

It's plainly written across Dís's face that she never expected Ori to snap at her in such a manner, but Vimli and Thorin look a little too amused. “Now I see the match,” Vimli says aloud, and Thorin stops bothering to hide his smile. 

“My sister meant to insult Dwalin, not your brother, Ori," Thorin says. "And as for the other matter, I gave Dwalin the leave, sister,” Thorin says, while Dís tries to find her tongue again. “Just as I gave you the leave to track Vimli halfway to Bree.” 

“What story is this? We were never told this story!” Kíli protests, but he gets ignored. 

Dís' wrath has been turned on Thorin now, her eyes narrowed. “If you believe I need _your leave_ to do anything, dear brother, you've truly had one too many blows to the head.” She turns to Kíli next, but she gives their father a hard look in between. “And the reason you were never told that story is because there is no story.”

Fíli and Kíli both look at their father. So does Ori, even. Vimli looks around the table, finishes his glass of wine, and says, “Your mother asked me to marry her. I didn't know that I wanted to be married to the princess of Erebor just yet. I left with my caravan. Then your mother tracked me down and told me to marry her, and I did.” 

“How can you tell someone to marry you?” Ori asks wonderingly. 

“She realized she was pregnant with Fíli,” Thorin explains. “And thus ends the subject.” He takes the bread when Vimli offers it, and Vimli starts to uncover the rest of the food. “Fíli, the butter, if you please.” Fíli does as told, not sure if things are all right now. He has no idea what his parents are thinking right now, or if he even wants to know. “How are your studies with Balin going, boys?” 

“I don't know, something about our great-grandmother and boats and...” Kíli serves himself some potatoes, frowning. “Something about boats.” He looks at Ori. “What was it about the boats?”

“Your great-grandmother was the head of the harbour and considered a true master of boat design. She studied with the Men of Dale, and then began a new guild in Erebor, for our own people who were interested in learning the trades of the water. She remained the head of the guild even after her marriage to King Thrór, and remained so until...” He pauses in the recitation, and Fíli sees the exact moment he remembers he's speaking directly to the Dwarf in question's living family. “Until her death.” 

There's lamb near Thorin and Dwalin, and Fíli eyes it while first his uncle serves himself, then their mother, before it's passed to Dwalin. “At least one of you is paying attention,” Thorin says. The meat finally gets to Fíli, thankfully not too much lighter. “And you need to be more diligent, especially since you'll be missing so many lessons soon.”

“It's only for a few weeks,” Fíli says quickly, hoping it is, and nothing goes wrong on this bloody trip.

They make it through the rest of dinner with as little trouble as possible, and Fíli wonders if Mahal really does listen to his prayers at times. After dinner though, Fíli realizes there's still a part of the evening to get through without the distraction of food. He should have made an offering this morning, a real one, not his usual prayer. He'd been tired though and hadn't felt like getting up early. 

He should have dragged his arse out of bed. 

Dwalin approaches them while Fíli's parents pretend they're not arguing over by the hearth. Ori is studying the titles of the books on the shelves, but there's nothing there he won't have seen before. No one in the family house is a particularly voracious reader. “Watch out,” he warns him, so Ori sees Dwalin. 

There's an awkwardness between the three of them, as Ori keeps looking at the books and Fíli looks at Dwalin, warning him not to make any of this worse. This evening has to go well. 

“I...” Dwalin starts, and stumbles, then makes a show of looking at the books as well. “Nori sent something for you. I wasn't sure I'd be welcome at your family home though.” 

“No, you wouldn't,” Ori replies, but it's not sharp. More a quiet confirmation. “It's not that anyone is really blaming you, not entirely. But we can't have the Captain of the Guard at our door. Sori and Mori could lose their jobs, and we'll lose business in the shop.” 

Fíli places a hand on Ori's elbow, his chest just brushing Ori's back. “I thought you said guards ate in your shop?”

“Not the kind who want me around,” Dwalin says, and Ori doesn't argue. “And I doubt Little Zan would keep Sori on if he thought she'd bring trouble down on him. And Mori's employer wouldn't either, I'd wager, from what I know of them.” Again Ori doesn't argue, but he's tense against Fíli, hardly breathing at all. “I won't come around, lad. I won't do anything to hurt your family.” 

The promise is being spoken as Thorin and Kíli join them, Fíli and Dwalin making room for them. “Amad and Adad are doing that thing they do where they pretend they're not arguing,” Kíli says, scratching behind his ear. “Do any of you have any good pipeweed? All we have in the tin is that sweet stuff Da likes.” His hand is already wandering around Fíli's shoulder, so Fíli elbows him before he can get to where Fíli's pouch is. “Why are you always so stingy?” 

“Because you already drink all my wine, you can't have my pipeweed too.” 

Kíli turns to Thorin, and their uncle sighs, but pulls out a leather pouch so Kíli can pack his pipe.

Across the room, Dís and Vimli have apparently settled the matter for the time being, because his father is sitting in his chair, their mother standing by the fire. “It'll be over soon enough,” Thorin says to Fíli, and turns away, back towards the centre of the room, Dwalin and Kíli obeying the silent order and following. 

He waits until they're all away before he asks, “Are you all right? We can leave.” 

“I still cannot believe I'm standing in a room with Thorin Oakenshield,” Ori confides, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I cannot believe he's your uncle. I mean, I knew he was, but actually meeting him, and I even _spoke_ to him...no one will ever believe me.” He makes a little noise when Fíli wraps his arms around him, and kisses his cheek, but doesn't push away. 

“I thought you were angry about what my mother said, or about Dwalin,” he laughs. “No, instead you're fawning over my uncle. I'm almost jealous.”

Ori shrugs, his smile bigger. “If you thought that was bad, I'd hate to hear what you'd think of what the guards say to me about my family.” 

They're going to have to discuss that before Fíli leaves, but he's not looking forward to it. He still doesn't know how to ask for a promise that's not really a proper one. Ori isn't even old enough to consent to a binding promise, and that's another thought Fíli doesn't need to think about too much. “Fair enough,” he says for the time being. “Come on now, before we're summoned.” 

The initial half-hour they spend talking isn't so bad, and his mother manages some politely interested questions about Ori's trade and his work. His father is more interested in his pipe though, and that worries Fíli. The nagging feeling gets worse and worse the longer they linger, because he just knows that whatever is father is getting ready to say has something to do with what his parents were arguing about, because his mother starts to grow impatient, one hand on the back of his father's chair that slowly moves down to his shoulder.

Eventually, his fears are confirmed when Vimli puts his pipe aside and says, “You just turned seventy-one, didn't you Ori?” 

Ori nods. “Yes.”

“And you've not earned your mastery.” It's not a question at all; Vimli knows very well that Ori is still an apprentice. “You are still under your parents' protection, then?” 

“Well, no,” Ori answers, starting to play with his bracelet again. “My mother died years ago, and my sire doesn't live in my family's home. My oldest brother and his wife, Dori and Adjoa, they're my guardians.” 

“They've met Fíli, we understand,” Dís says. “They approve of the match, then?” 

“They don't disapprove,” Ori answers, which is about the best answer Fíli is hoping for. “My family trusts me.” He looks at Fíli, and smiles. “As long as I keep up my lessons, and get my work done, and follow the rules they set, they don't mind if I see Fíli in my free time.” 

“Do they know you leave the safety of the mountain? That you go down to the river?” At first, Fíli thinks they've caught them both out, but Ori just looks confused. 

He tilts his head up at Fíli, and then even over at Kíli, as though he's looking for some sort of hint, then says, “Yes. They usually have me gather herbs and flowers and things when I'm out. My oldest sister, Adjoa, she was trained as an herbalist before she married Dori, and my sister Mori has me get things for dying. I've been allowed outside on my own since I was fifty.” He still looks confused. “Should I not be? I've seen the wolves before, but they've never bothered me.” 

Vimli is definitely uncomfortable. He hates that Fíli and Kíli leave the mountain for work, and he hadn't known how often they ventured outside the stone to hunt on their own now. Dís seems unconvinced about all of it. “What happens when Fíli leaves the mountain?” she asks. “This is a short trip. A month, a month and a half, and he'll return. But he'll take longer jobs, ones that can have him gone half a year. Once, he was gone for a whole year with his uncle, when they went to see our cousins.” 

“Mother,” Fíli says sharply, because she had no right to put that thought in Ori's head. “That's none of your concern.”

“Oh?” she challenges. “So there is a promise between you?” When Fíli cannot immediately answer, she smiles in that aggravating self-satisfied way of hers she has when she knows she's found a weak spot. “No, there isn't, is there? So when you're gone for work, there's nothing to keep Ori bound to you, nothing to keep him from being courted by someone else -”

“Dís, this isn't your place,” Thorin interrupts, finally stepping in. “Fíli is an adult now, and his decisions are his own.” 

“Just as your decisions are your own? Why don't you show us all your mark, then, Thorin, and tell us how your decisions are your own. Or show us your children. Tell Fíli he's free to do as he pleases because no one will ever be effected by his decisions, tell him his life is completely his own, just as ours are.” Thorin doesn't respond, and Fíli feels something tighten inside. “You named him your heir, Thorin. Your decisions changed my sons' whole lives, especially Fíli's, and mine and Vimli's lives, and all of our peoples' lives as well. And now his decisions will have that same effect, every single one he makes.” 

That has his own temper flaring, and he even forgets how the conversation started, forgets that Ori is still standing right in the room. “I'm not ignorant of my position, Amad!” He hears his father mutter something, but Kíli is beside Fíli now, his expression firm and just as set against their mother. “Neither is Kíli! I know what my decisions mean for the settlement, I'm not an idiot!” 

“He's not of age, he's from the bloody Tin Borough, almost half of his family are criminals, and you are sneaking around with him outside the mountain, bringing him to your forge at all hours, where anyone can see, and you don't even have a promise with him!” 

“Mother -”

“Everyone, just calm down -!”

But it's Ori, his face red with anger, that silences the room with, “You won't talk about my family like that! I don't care who you are, I _don't_ , because my family has worked hard all their lives, and my mother and Lori and Dori and Adjoa and even Mori fought at Azanulbizar for _your_ family!” 

“And again,” Vimli dryly says to himself, scratching at his beard. “Well done, my gem.” 

Dís takes a breath and holds it, turning her back on them all as she paces towards the cabinet she keeps the candles and the matches in, then back towards them. “I apologise, Ori. What I said was very much out of line, and I meant no true insult to your family, or you,” she says, more calmly. “You are my son's mark, and I have no intention of parting you. Neither of my sons are rational enough to make such a cold decision.”

“Were we just insulted?” Kíli asks Fíli in a muttered aside. “I couldn't tell with that one.” 

“Think it came out even,” Fíli mutters back, hardly noticing his own hands as they reach for Ori, inviting him back against the safety of Fíli's body. The difference in their height is just enough Ori's hair tickles Fíli's mouth, just enough he can press a kiss there without being too obvious. “What are you saying then, Amad?” 

Thorin answers the question, and for the thousandth and one time in his life, Fíli takes notice of his uncle's covered wrists. “Your mother means that things are going to become very complicated, and very quickly. You haven't been subtle.” 

“Aye, because that's what Durin's line is known for, _subtlety_ ,” Dwalin says, still smoking his pipe as though nothing at all just happened. “The gossip isn't sounding very kind right now, lad. People around here don't have much to entertain themselves with, except making up stories, and it's real easy when you already laid the groundwork for them.” 

“Are you _really_ the one who wants to be emphasizing that particular point, Dwalin?” Vimli asks, more kindly than Dís would have, but harsher than Thorin. “This isn't going to be as everyone else's matches are, lads, I'm sorry to say, where no one says much about being 'of-age', or from different streets. You've had your fun, but with Fíli leaving, and the situation being what it is, things will have to have a more...stable foundation. That's the only way this can carry on without causing trouble.”

The worst of it is...there's nothing for Fíli to argue against. They're right. If there are already rumours going around, Fíli wagers they're not kind, and they're mostly about Ori. All those stares he's been jealous of, when he should have been angry instead.

“I think Ori and I should take our leave, then,” Fíli says, feeling Ori start in surprise. “To talk.” 

Dís frowns, but nods, her hand back on Vimli's chair. “We'll finish this side of the conversation later.” That's not something Fíli is looking forward to, but it's all so unavoidable now, everything crashing around them and falling apart. 

The good-byes are quiet, and Ori doesn't say much of anything as the pair of them walk back to Fíli's little forge. He doesn't bother to light the crystals or lamps in the downstairs, both their eyesight good enough to navigate to the stairs and up the flat. 

Once inside, Fíli stokes the fire in the hearth, and hopes Ori says something first. He doesn't though, so that leaves it to Fíli. “Could have gone worse.” 

“Nori knows,” Ori says, throwing Fíli off entirely, but when he continues, it becomes clear. “Dwalin told him who you really are, and Nori wrote me about it.”

“Dwalin didn't have the right,” Fíli replies, even though it hardly matters. 

“Nori and Dwalin don't seem very good at thinking clearly when they're around one another.” Ori has his knees drawn up to his chest, and he looks terribly small in the light. “What does your family want?” 

There's something incredibly comforting in being able to sit beside Ori and fall into him. Ori is soft and warm, and Fíli wants to stay with him forever. He's going to miss him so much on this job, he realises. “They want to lay down the start of the courtship,” he says. “Formally, with papers and everything. That way everything is considered settled, and no one can accuse you of using me, or the other way around.” 

“But I'm not old enough to be engaged.” 

“It's not an engagement, exactly. More a promise of an engagement. It's not too common anymore, and it was really only ever a noble practise. It means your family will have to consent and sign their agreement.” It's almost like what he wanted, but wrong, because now it doesn't seem like a choice. It isn't a choice. “Otherwise, things could take a bad turn for you and for me. Rumours spread fast, and they turn ugly quick.”

Ori licks his lips, and rests his temple against Fíli. “You really are the heir, aren't you?”

“I am.”

“I don't like it.” 

“I don't much like it either, right now. Seems my mother doesn't either. I knew she resented Thorin for not settling, not going off and making children of his own, but I didn't know it bothered her so much.” She had seemed so genuinely upset, and Fíli cannot fathom why her anger runs so deep. Had she known his uncle's match, disliked them? Or had Thorin driven them away somehow? “We don't have to, if you don't want to.” It aches even to say it, much less consider it, but even as selfish as he can be, he can't hurt Ori like this. 

The silence goes on so long, he starts to drift in and out, not asleep or even dozing, but thinking of all their possible futures, and hoping they can keep the worst away from their lives. 

After awhile though, when the fire is still comfortably burning, but might need more to burn soon, Ori says, “I kept telling myself I'd give you up if things started to get too complicated, to protect my family. But now it's complicated, and I can't.” 

Fíli kisses his jaw, relieved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's five in the morning and I haven't slept yet. I think I'm going to die.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They couldn't keep it a secret forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a commissioned chapter that fought me every step of the way, not to mention the various RL problems that have never seemed to stop. I finally seem to be in calm waters for the time being, but honestly, I haven't even checked my email in weeks because that is the only place my student loans know where to find me. 
> 
> The person who commissioned this requested anonymity, and I cannot quite recall if they wanted full anonymity. So I am posting now, and if they do agree to be named, this will be changed to list them. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all like this.

The problem with sisters, Thorin observes, is that some of them are princesses by birth. And they _know_ it. 

“He's too young,” Dís says yet again, and Thorin wishes he would finally simply go deaf. “He's younger than Kíli! Do you think Kíli is mature enough to enter a promise with anyone? I can hardly trust him to attend a fitting on time.” 

“And there's the other matter,” Vimli points out, in a very unhelpful sort of way. 

Dwalin bristles. “What other matter?” It's not so much a question as it is a warning. 

Thorin pours himself a glass of wine and considers it for a long moment before taking a long drink. It could help his headache. 

His wrist is aching as well, but it does that fairly often around this time of year, and has for quite a few years. He used to wonder at what it meant, but he's learned to put such thoughts out of his head. 

Around him, the conversation somehow grows even more tense, when Vimli dares to say, “Everyone knows where you went, Dwalin. Who you went to.” 

“Everyone does now, do they?” 

“He's a law-marked thief and poacher, and I dare say he's now a smuggler. What exactly is it you two find to talk about?” Dís, as always, proceeds to make things worse. “Though Balin's had a good look at the family now, and from what he says, I suppose you don't spend too much time talking at all, do you?”

“Do you have something to say, Dís?”

“Try thinking with the head on your shoulders and not the one dangling between your legs, you -”

“Dís,” Thorin says, and his sister silences, but not without an expression that tells Thorin just how much more she has to say. “Dwalin is not your child. You have no right to tell him how to conduct his affairs.”

In truth, Thorin is simply tired of the whole matter. He doesn't know why Dwalin simply cannot go on ignoring Nori as he has all these years. That was out of ignorance, of course, but Thorin doesn't see why it should make much of a difference when Nori is not even in the settlement. In Thorin's experience, bed partners who slip out the window before you wake aren't the sort who want to be pursued. Well, perhaps not his experience, not exactly, but sense told him that must be the case. 

On the other hand, it's Dwalin's affair, not Thorin's, and his only interest in the affair is Dwalin's safety and reputation. If Dwalin chose to go to Nori, Thorin has to trust that his friend knows what he was doing. 

Dís is not a follower of that sort of trust. That, Thorin does have experience with.

“I do have the right to tell him when he's being a great bloody idiot,” Dís snaps. 

“And you've made your opinion clear, so drop it for the night,” Thorin replies. She's made her opinion clear on quite a few things tonight, subjects Thorin thought had been resolved a long time ago. “You were the one insisting on a promise. Why are you against it now?” 

“I didn't think he'd _agree_ ,” she sputters.

“When have either of our sons ever done what we've wanted them to do?” Vimli asks, quite rightly, in Thorin's opinion. 

“I meant Ori,” she clarifies. “I was so sure he'd refuse. He's not even at his majority yet, to tie himself down...” She smacks her hand against the mantle angrily. “More fool me, to think for an instant Fíli's match wouldn't be as stubborn as he is.” 

“The word you're looking for,” Vimli says, “is _devoted_.”

“It's really not.” Dís said it in a very final sort of way, and Vimli at least knew where to give in. 

Dwalin apparently doesn't yet. Or maybe he doesn't care, where Nori is concerned. But what he says next is not quite what Thorin would have expected, had he really thought about it. “Nori holds faith with me,” he says firmly. “He took my gift. He gave me one in turn.” 

“He gave you a lock of hair,” Dís dismisses. 

“That's not a small gift from their clan,” Vimli says, rightfully so if Thorin remembers right. The 'Ri family that Ori and Nori belong to is an offshoot of a family that are cousins to their own family line, the Ris line. A knot of hair such as the one Dwalin now carries would have been considered as good as a marriage promise in Erebor, coming from Nori. 

Whether Nori knows that though, is a different question. 

“He knows his mother was titled?” Thorin asks Dwalin. 

“Didn't seem too sure of what that title was exactly, but he knew there was one,” Dwalin confirms. “Balin looked through the family lines. Thorin, she was a full lady in her own right. Her children _are_ nobles. It's partly why Balin agreed to take the lad in on scholarship. They would have held places in court in Erebor.” 

And their mother died a pauper, from what Thorin understands. Put in the stone plain, with just a dedicate to intern her. She's not the first noble since Erebor was lost, nor will she be the last. “Noble blood would soften the law mark.” 

“Not enough,” Dís says. “And if he earns himself a bracelet, that's it.” 

Thorin catches the look on Dwalin's face, the way he glances towards the fire. Dwalin has always been a terrible liar. “Unless you have another weight to add to the scale, Dwalin.” 

“The plan for Erebor,” Dwalin says, and Thorin feels the rising swell of outrage coming from both Dís and Vimli at the mere mention. “Nori is willing to sign on, if it means his crimes are pardoned.” It goes without saying why that matters so much to Dwalin. 

The subject of Erebor means that Dís and Vimli's attention is back on Fíli, and Kíli as well, Nori all but forgotten. “If you think for one moment I am supporting you dragging my children to that hell -” Vimli starts. 

“You do not need to support me. Fíli is of age, and Kíli soon will be. They're free to make their own choices.” Poor phrasing considering the course the evening has taken. “Dís...”

“You didn't even ask us,” Vimli says, when Dís doesn't speak. Unlike his wife, his anger rarely shows itself, Vimli more prone to sadness and withdrawal where Dís would shout and carry on. “Fíli was hardly swaddled before you made the decision he would be your heir. It was unfair to us and to him, when you have the option of seeking out your own mark, if you had the courage -”

“Do not speak to me of courage, Vimli,” Thorin says, biting back harder words. 

Dís looks at the fire, not at Thorin, or her husband, or Dwalin. “They're too young. Fíli and Ori are too young to know what they want.” 

“You were hardly older than Ori when Fíli was forged,” Thorin says. “Are you saying I should have kept you from making your choice because you were too young?” 

“That was different,” she replies. “I was carrying, I needed a spouse, Fíli needed his second parent. The situation in Ered Luin was _different_. And Fíli is not me. He's never known hardship the way we have, he's never known _pain_ the way we have.”

“But Ori has.” Dwalin has come a bit closer to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Trust me, Dís, that family has had nothing easy.”

“Is that supposed to reassure me?” she demands, making a dismissive gesture with her hands. “Nothing easy in his whole life? And suddenly he finds out his match is a prince, something with money, someone with connections.” She clenches her fists, spreads her fingers, than clenches them again. “I think he cares for Fíli. I hope he does at least. But I cannot help but think...he might be using Fíli, whether he knows it or not.” 

Thorin finds himself running his hand over the gauntlet hiding the name written there. “Needing someone is not the same as using them, Dís.” 

“What would you know of this?” she snaps nastily, but just as quickly, she falls back on herself. “Thorin...you...you never sought out your match, you have no idea what it feels like.”

“You needed me,” Thorin reminds her. “You and Frerin both needed me. Did that mean you loved me any less?” 

“That wasn't the same,” Dís argues. 

“Things aren't always night and day,” Thorin counters. “What is it that truly bothers you about this? That Fíli is doing something you don't like, or who Ori is? Who his family is?”

Dís purses her lips, and she's so quiet for so long, that Vimli places a hand on her back. She shakes him off though, and moves to sit down in the other armchair, the one that is hers. For a time, she plays with her skirt, and then she smooths it down again, and says, “His brother has a law-mark. And from what I understand, not a one of his blood-siblings and him share a sire.” She does not look at Thorin when she says, “I had enquiries made about his sire, Cines. I didn't want to tell you, I knew what you would say. But I did.”

“Cines is a known forger,” Dwalin provides, before Dís says another word. “Ori came by his talent, honestly, though I doubt he knows it. Cines has nothing to do with the family, and never has. Glori did not keep company with them for long.” 

“Long enough to make a child,” Dís says.

“I asked my own questions, I'll thank you to note,” Dwalin replies harshly. “Everyone in the neighbourhood says Cines is just a name in the 'Ri home, and never a guest. Glori might have been fool enough to seek their company for a time, but she wasn't enough of one to let them stay.” He rolls his eyes. “And every stoop-sitter in the place gave the idea that Cines wouldn't come around even if Ori was linked to you, Thorin.” 

Vimli is frowning, and looks between the lot of them. “A forger? Of what, exactly?”

Dwalin meets Thorin's eyes, and in the few moments, he sees just how much Dwalin is carrying. It's too much, perhaps, and yet Dwalin is taking it all on just to protect Nori. 

“That's not your concern,” Thorin says to Vimli, ending the moment. “Cines is of no concern to Ori's household, either, apparently. So why does their name matter when it comes to Ori?” 

“Because Fíli is my son!” she snaps. “ _My_ son, Thorin! My son, that was forged in my belly! And still, you think you get to speak above me on matters concerning him, Durin's-name, you arrogant -”

“What do you want of me, Dís? What do you wish me to say?” Thorin thunders, angry and tired, and done with the way she kept insisting Fíli had no mind of his own. “Do you wish me to tell you that I told Fíli he had the right to declare himself to no longer be my heir? Do you want to hear about my own agony, as he took half a year to decide before he declared he would always be my heir, as long as I would have him?”

That when Fíli asked, while making his decision, “Why am I the heir?” Thorin had answered honestly, “Because I believe you love our people, and I believe you would always put our people first, would always do what is right.” And he had been sad to say it, because he knew it was true, and Fíli was too young for it. 

But Thorin had been younger than Fíli when Thror had fallen and Thráin had vanished, when he had been declared the rightful king of his people.

Vimli shakes his head. “It's not right,” he says aloud, more to himself than anyone else. “But...” 

“But what?” Dís turns on him now, looking betrayed. 

“You think he's beneath Fíli,” Vimli says quietly to her, sounding somewhat adrift. “You cannot be the one to go to his family.”

“I....”

“None of them share a sire,” Dwalin says. “Lori was her first, and she was born when Glori was younger than Ori, and not by her match. Dori was the second, by her match, and she did not marry them, nor did she stay with them. They're poor. They live in the Tin Borough. Nori's not the only disreputable one, either.” He looks at Dís with his eyebrows raised. “Dís. You had such hopes for him.” 

“What parent doesn't?” she asks, but she sounds less sure of herself. 

“Could you stand in their home and not show your disappointment?” Dwalin asks. “Fíli doesn't mind. But I know you do.” 

She doesn't argue anymore, doesn't say anything. Instead she sits on the ottoman near Vimli's chair, and bows her head, one of her braids escaping from behind her ear. “He'd prefer you, anyway,” she finally says. 

It's just like Dís, to rage up and then die down just as quickly. She's never been any other way. 

“It will all work out,” Thorin reassures her, leaning down so he can wrap an arm around her shoulders and kiss her temple, as he did when she was a little Dwarf chasing after him, eager for his undivided attention. “I will do my best by him.”

“You always do,” she replies quietly. “Perhaps it's better you do not have your own children. How could they compete against Fíli?” 

“Sometimes Kíli is my favourite,” Thorin jokes. “But no, I do not believe anyone could hold a candle to your boys.”

♦

“I should go home,” Ori says, but cannot make himself get up out of the bed. He's so warm and comfortable right now, lying in Fíli's soft bed with the fine blankets and furs, watching Fíli pluck at his fiddle, tuning it, maybe. “They'll worry.”

“And yet, you seem to still be naked in my bed,” Fíli counters, smiling down at the fiddle. “Not that I'm complaining.” 

Ori forces himself up, intending to finally get dressed, but Fíli has other ideas. He sets the fiddle down and uses his own weight to push Ori back down on the bed, caging him in there with an arm on either side of his head. He knows he shouldn't laugh and wrap his arms around Fíli's neck, enjoying the way Fíli kissed him, his mouth moving to Ori's ear. 

“Stay,” he pleads. “Make something up, tell them you're ill, just stay with me tonight.” 

“I'll still have to leave in the morning, and they'll worry, anyway.” They really will, probably already are, but Ori doesn't make any more effort to get up than he was before. “I could send a missive telling them I'm ill, I suppose. And that Lord Balin is letting me stay the night.” 

“You'd need his signature,” Fíli points out. 

“They don't know what his signature looks like,” Ori reminds him, hardly believing what he's thinking of doing. “Just the once?” he asks, in a small voice. “Would it be really terrible?”

“Are you asking me to talk you out of staying in my bed for the rest of the night?” He kisses the lobe of Ori's ear, then the soft skin beneath, then Ori's jaw. “Because that is the last thing I am considering, honestly.” He stops though, resting their temples together for a moment, then sitting back up. “I keep telling myself everything is going to be alright when I'm gone, but I...”

Ori can feel his anxiety, his worries. “I don't know what they'll say.” 

“But maybe they'll agree?” Fíli asks hopefully. “It's not an engagement, it can be broken.” He doesn't sound happy over the idea, but Ori isn't either. 

“No, it couldn't.” He sits up too, right as Fíli gets off the bed and finds his trousers. “If I broke a promise with you, that would be the end for me. You're a noble, I'm not. No one would ever court me again, not with the risk of you still having a claim. Once I make a promise to you...my family might worry that I'll change my mind, but won't be able to.” 

Fíli laces up his trousers and grabs his shirt, pulling it over his head. “I hadn't realised that.” He huffs and scrubs his hand through his hair. “Damn it, I don't want to make your life difficult.” 

“My life has never been easy,” Ori admits, smiling, hitching a shoulder. “You're the least of my problems.” 

“I'm so terribly wounded by that,” Fíli says dryly. “What's more important than me?”

“Taxes, rent for both the house and restaurant, keeping my siblings out of the Tower, my apprenticeship,” Ori lists, getting a laugh out of Fíli. 

“All fair points,” Fíli concedes. He gathers his hair back in a queue, and while he doesn't look quite respectable, he doesn't look like he just spent the past hour or so in bed with Ori. “Ori, I'm happy to do whatever it is that will make your family comfortable.” When Ori looks at him, confused, he clarifies. “Being around my family, realising what I was asking you to deal with...I might not like what your family asks, but it's not fair for me to expect you to deal with...” He waves his hands. “Well, my parents and my uncle, and especially my parents, and handle it well, like you did, and not be willing to do the exact same thing.” He inhales through his teeth. “Are you as scared of my mother as I am of Mori?”

Ori wants to lie, but while he might not know the princess very well, he knows when someone doesn't like to get their hands dirty. Mori, on the other hand, not only loves getting her hands dirty, she doesn't mind breaking a knuckle or two in the process. “No. And you should probably keep being scared of Mori.” 

“Noted,” Fíli says, laughing. “Next door keeps late hours, and she has a shop assistant she'll lend me. They can go for a messenger.” He looks at Ori, seeming almost nervous, an odd look on Fíli. “If you do want to stay, that is.” 

He shouldn't. He has that sick feeling he gets in the pit of his stomach whenever he's doing something wrong that he knows he'll get caught at sooner or later. But he already knows he's going to do the wrong thing, so it's not as though there's much of an argument to have with himself. 

“Go fetch them,” he says, giving in. “I'll write the note. Tell them I don't feel well and Lord Balin has allowed me to stay the night.” It's a bad lie, an easily breakable one, because what if one of them decides to come up and see to him themselves? Ori will be in trouble with his family and Lord Balin alike, and he doesn't think Fíli's family would be too pleased either. 

The note gets written though, and the apprentice takes it from Fíli to find a messenger at one of the Aviaries, along with two coppers. The easy way Fíli spends money bothers Ori more now, that's it's being used to do something like this. 

It's so easy to forget though, once Fíli comes back to bed with two cups and a bottle of wine. He pours them both a generous glass, and after a time, it settles Ori's nerves, and he can focus on the here and now. 

“Did you ever read about Erebor?” Fíli asks, lying back on his elbows. 

“Of course,” Ori says, wondering why Fíli is asking. “My oldest siblings were born there. They remember it. They miss it. I don't quite understand it, I suppose. I was born here. Ered Luin is my home.” He doesn't understand what's so bad about Ered Luin, really. There's no reason to believe they'd be any less poor in Erebor, and Erebor might not have the same sort of places for Ori to hide, the same neighbours, the same bedroom with the water painted on his ceiling. He's even gotten his promised roof garden started, hauling in rocks and crumbled up shells to form the base. 

Ered Luin's dangers are known to him, just as well as he knows her streets and her gates and her stone. Erebor seems too grand an idea to even comprehend. 

“I think you'd like it if I gave you a secret to hold over Nori,” Fíli says. “Keep you even.”

“What do you know about Nori?” He doesn't understand. Why would Fíli know a thing about Nori? 

Fíli pours himself another cup, and sits up, his eyes bright in the lamplight. “My uncle wants to take back Erebor. Not very soon. Not for a few years, not until he's sure what sort of party he wants to take, but he is planning it now. And I and my brother will go, as will Dwalin. And Dwalin told me that Nori had begun to consider it. His crimes would be pardoned, and struck from the record, even his law mark. Your family would be titled, and he would share in the wealth of the treasure waiting.”

“But...the dragon?” 

“From what our cousin Dáin says, Lord Dáin, you know, of the Iron Hills? His scouts say that Smaug has not been seen in decades. And that there are auspicious signs, some say.” 

All Ori can think of is his brother, dead by Wargs or by Orcs or cold, or by a dragon, the one that had driven their people from their very home. Or Fíli, the same. 

“You would go?” 

“Ori, you do understand how...precarious things are in Ered Luin?” When Ori shakes his head, not at all understanding what Fíli means, he elaborates. “The Men around here do not want us here. My uncle has kept things quiet, but there's been a few incidences as of late, Men intending to come into Ered Luin and do Mahal knows what. And worse, the mountains here cannot support our people as we grow. The rock is too weak. There have been collapses, and the readers say that we will not last another two decades at the rate we are growing. We need a proper home again.” He bites his lip, and sets his cup aside so he can grab for Ori's hands. “I am the Crown Prince, Ori. I will do what I have to do to give our people that home.” He brings Ori's hands to his mouth and kisses his knuckles. “To give _you_ a home.”

Ori bends his neck so their temples touch. “I would go too, then.”

“What?” Fíli pulls back, frowning. “No. You can not.”

“Why not? I would be of age by the time it was decided, right? And if my brother is going, and you're going, then I want to go too.” He scowls at Fíli when Fíli doesn't immediately agree. “Just because I don't know the right end of a bow or own a sword doesn't mean I'm useless, you know. I've spent more time outside this mountain than half the nobs in this place, and I know plants better than most, and I'm plenty good with a proper slingshot -”

Fíli laughs, and Ori stops, not sure if he should be insulted or not. “I only meant,” Fíli manages, after a breath, “that I hate the thought of you in danger.” 

“Because I don't feel the same?” 

“Fair enough,” Fíli says, solemn. “Can I say it makes me happy, to know you would keep me home the same way I would you?” 

“I wish you weren't going now,” Ori confesses. “I know why you are going, I understand that, and I don't fault you for it, because you're working. The absolutely stupid things Nori has done for money, you have no idea.” And Ori still sometimes wakes in the night imagining he's heard Nori's cries, the same as that night he caught them stitching up Nori's shoulder after the boar. “Do you have to go?”

Fíli grins, and oh, but he really is so handsome when he does, his dimples showing, and Ori's heart still flutters a bit. “They could always use more Dwarves, you know. You could come as well. Learn to live on the road. Kíli could show you how to use a bow, and I bet you'd be wicked with some little knives. We'd be together.”

And Fíli makes it sound like such a nice idea, but it's a terrible one. “I would fall behind with my lessons. I could lose my place, even.” Because much as he adores Fíli, and he does, he can admit that now, he _wants_ his mastery. He wants to be a scribe, wants a proper trade. His siblings have sacrificed almost all for him so he could be one, and he cannot justify giving up his place with Lord Balin for anything. Anyone. Not after what they've done. 

“You'll never lose your place with Balin,” Fíli assures him. “He won't risk it.”

That doesn't reassure Ori. “What do you mean?”

“Balin thinks you're a clever student, before you get that in your head,” Fíli says quickly, smiling. “But even if you left with the caravan, he would hold your place. He would rather have you under his watch, where he can make sure you don't somehow embarrass me or Kíli more than we've already managed.” He's not saying something, and Ori would know it even if they were not so wound together right now. 

“There's something else, isn't there?” he asks. “I understand that bit, but there's something more?” 

It must not be too bad, because while Fíli looks and feels conflicted, there's nothing sour in it. “Your old master was a bit more clever than Balin gave her credit for. I don't think she really understands the situation, but apparently she attempted to extort money out of him for her silence on you and your family amongst the nobles here.” 

And Ori just bets she was counting on that gossip to get her invitations into some of the nicer sitting rooms in Ered Luin, and possibly a few more students along the way. “Did he give her any?”

“I don't know. I overheard only a little, and my signing isn't terribly good, when it comes to the old Erebor signs.” 

_Poor student_ , Ori signs, and Fíli frowns at him, face still bright with mischief. 

“I caught _that_ , thank you kindly.” He tackles Ori down to the bed, pinning him, as Ori laughs, forgetting everything but this, just this, just for now.

♦

There's light coming from downstairs. Sori is headed back to bed when she notices it. She thinks long and hard before she goes downstairs, still feeling a bit muggy from the wine and her need to sleep. Her conscience grabs a hold of her though, so she carefully makes her way downstairs, taking a rather long moment with each step, worried about missing a step and falling. It's only happened the one time, but it upset everyone so much, she hates the thought of it happening again.

Once she's downstairs, she needs a moment to orient herself, then she makes her way into the sitting room, where the light is. 

Mori is sitting on the hearth, beside the banked fire, with a cup in hand, and runestones laid out in front of her.

“Better not let Dori catch you at that,” she cautions, looking upstairs. “You know how he gets.” 

“I don't care,” Mori replies, distracted. 

Even more curious now, Sori sits down on the footstool. “What do they say?”

“That's just it,” she snaps at Sori. “They don't make any bloody sense!”

“What do you mean?”

“Look for yourself!”

So Sori does, and she's not quite still so drunk she should be seeing nonsense. Yet all she sees is nonsense. “Hidden...no, secret? Secret places. Secret places? Trees? Fire?” She cannot puzzle out the message in the slightest. “What in the world does any of that mean? What have you been asking?”

Mori huffs. “If you tell anyone, I'll poison your wine.” 

“Who am I going to tell?” Sori has few friends, and truly, Mori is her closest confidante. 

“I've been asking about Ori,” she grumbles. When Sori groans, she hisses, “That noble is an arrogant little liar, and you know it too! Why didn't he introduce himself by his title, his family? Why hasn't his family come to us, or invited us?”

“He's a nob, through and through,” Sori protests, sitting back on her hands. “Did you see those swords? Beautiful work. That steel...”

Mori snaps her fingers in Sori's face. “Focus, you idiot -”

“Oi,” Sori mutters.

“- the _sigil_ , Sori, the sigil! Did you recognise that sigil?” 

Sori shrugs. “It was damn good work. He did it himself, you know? See how young he is, and he's doing work that good? I wasn't nearly that good when I was his age.” 

“It's like talking to a _wall_ ,” Mori grits out, and reaches over to smack Sori upside the head. “The _design_ , Sori! Think! If you can somehow through the wine!” 

The smack hurt, and Sori rubs at her head, sulking. “What about it?” It had been an awfully good design. 

“That boy is of Durin's line, or I'll cut off my braids,” Mori says, finally getting to the point. 

“Your hair would actually be worth quite a bit, you know -”

“Yours would be worth more,” Mori warns, and Sori finds herself clutching at the twin braids she wears for sleep protectively. “He's of Durin's line, I'm telling you. He's lying to us, and worse, he's lying to Ori.” 

Sori will blame the wine later, but she cannot fight her laugh down. 

Mori glares. “What's funny?”

“Why do you think he's lying to Ori?” 

“Because Ori would have told us if he knew, Ori cannot keep secrets from us.” She should have stayed upstairs. Ori will be furious with her later, because she's openly giggling at Mori's angry face. “What do you know that I don't know?” she asks Sori, in a threatening sort of way that would scare Sori more if she didn't know for a fact she could take Mori even drunk. “Sori, you tell me now, you useless piece of pyrite!” 

She gets Sori by one of her braids, right near the root, and Sori suddenly viciously remembers how dirty Mori fights. “Ow,” Sori complains, going with the motion so it hurts less. “Oh, come off it, it's not as though I knew for sure. But I knew when he was sneaking around with that butcher's boy -”

“Him? Really?” 

“Yes, how shocking that our little brother is just as shallow as we are at times,” Sori says. “What does it matter? That nob isn't letting Ori out of his sight, I'm sure.” She grins at Mori. “I really cannot believe Dori and Adjoa bought that whole message about Ori being ill. It's like they haven't learned from any of us. And after you sneaking Samin into your room all those years, really...” She shrugs, rethinking. “But then, they've always had a blind spot for Ori a mile wide.” 

Mori doesn't look amused. Without saying anything, she puts the stones back in the clay cup, and uses her tongs to hold them over the fire again until they're hot. “ _May the Maker hear my prayers, and guide me,_ ” she prays in Khuzdul. She thinks for a long time, before furrowing her brow and asking, “ _Who is Ori's match?_ ”

She casts the stones, and Sori waits, feeling almost sober. 

“Damn it!” Mori swears harshly under her breath. 

“What?”

“Gold,” Mori reads aloud. “Head.”

“He's blond,” Sori says, not at all sure why she should be shocked. 

“First,” Mori continues, so furious her hands are visibly shaking. “Strong. Above.” 

Sori huffs. “I'm not really sober enough to deal with this nonsense. What does all that mean?”

“I know he's of Durin's line. I _know_ it.” She stares at the stones hard. “But it can't be.”

“ _What_?” She feels even if she was truly sober she would not be following this conversation. “What are you on about?” 

“Nothing. I don't mean anything.” She stands up, shaking her head, and scoops up the stones in the cup, keeping her hands wrapped in the fabric of her sleeves while she hides it away behind the loose stone in the hearth, so Dori won't see it. “You should be in bed.”

“I should be,” Sori agrees, feeling warm and content again. “Help me up the stairs?”

“Of course, you idiot,” Mori says, pulling her up to her feet and moving her towards the stairs. “Dori will never let it go if he finds out I let you break your stupid neck.”

It's a few days later when she comes in on the heels of Dori and Adjoa, and nearly crashes into them, standing stock still in the entryway to the sitting room, does it finally come together in her own head, what Mori must have read in the stones that night. 

Fíli is there, his hand on Ori's shoulder, standing close to him, which would be trouble enough. But no, Mori is bustling through them all with a tray in her hands, and she's serving tea to King Thorin Oakenshield, who is sitting in their armchair in in all his regal glory.

He stands now, and oh, he's taller than even Mori. “Dori, son of Glori,” he says, and Dori nods. “I am Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór.”

It says a lot about how he fills the room that even Mori doesn't have a comment for that.

Fíli steps forward when the king beckons, and again bows to them, just as he did on Ori's birthday. “My apologies for misleading you before. We had our reasons.” He glances back at Ori, who has his arms crossed over his chest, his fingers twisting in the sleeves. “I gave you my father's name, before. More commonly, I am known as Fíli, first son of Dís, daughter of Hrera, heir to Thorin Oakenshield.” 

“I'm sorry,” Ori whispers to them all, though Sori can hardly hear it past the rushing in her ears. “But I knew you'd get upset.”

Oh, she thinks to herself, a bit winded. _Gold. Head._ She sees it now. Almost funny, because he's blond. Little bit of a joke there, maybe. Who knew the Maker had a sense of humour?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember you can find me on Tumblr at [The March Rabbit](www.tumblr.com/themarchrabbit).


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to two people.
> 
> To The Silver Lady, who likes her privacy but knows who she is, when my sister and I were literally about to go without food for a week, gave us money for groceries, despite being stretched herself. Her kindness was so great I cried.
> 
> And to pangur-pangur, who is in fact one of the greatest humans on the entire planet, and should be treated as such. She is in fact be one of the few reasons I'm still here in the Land of the Living. I would not be here without her, much less writing.

“Do you have any idea how dead you are?” Mori demands the moment she's got Ori in the kitchen, her braids still mostly gathered up at the crown of her head. “You absolute little _sneak_!” It has the promise of punishment to be suffered later, but Ori still isn't all that sure whether it'll be the sort that entails extra chores, or the kind that ends with him not being allowed to see Fíli.

Sori is sitting on the kitchen table, smoking her pipe, though Adjoa told her to get a proper tea together. She doesn't seem all that concerned with starting it, but Mori is doing enough for all three of them, in any case. “It doesn't seem fair. Why do you get a prince? None us got princes.” That got her a glare from Mori, so Sori added, “Or princesses.”

“I'm just fine with mine,” Mori still said, sneering.

“Yeah? Lucky you.” She says it like it's nothing, and indeed, Sori reaches above and grabs a bottle of wine out of the rack built into the stone above, the corkscrew already sitting out, without so much as a sad look. Her sleeve is rolled back however, and Ori can see the name there on her wrist, still written in stark black. Careful letters, like someone who always wanted to be precise. He wonders what Sori's name looked like on Seung's wrist.

She pops the bottle without looking at either of them, and takes a swig right from it. 

Ori can't look at her when she does it, and it doesn't seem like Mori can either, the braids that have come loose falling down to hide her face as she leans over the apples she's slicing. Sori, on the other hand, takes an even longer drag from the bottle, then pours some in a cup and hands it to Ori. “Peace, little love. I'm not going to get drunk when your marriage negotiation is going. Especially not when it's the bloody king doing it.” She forces the cup into his hands instead of drinking from it. “But you might need that. You're whiter than a cave fish.” 

With how light-headed he feels, she's likely right, so he takes a drink of it, hoping maybe it really will do something to help. It's sweet, like the wine Fíli had bought from the market for him, the one they had drank in bed together, wrapped up and warm.

It's not the same, but he does want very much to be back in that moment, and the memory of it makes him feel just a step more sure of himself 

“He's got more grey in his hair now,” Mori says, laying the apples out carefully. “Hand me that bread, there's a love, and one of you get the butter and the honey.”

“Not the honey!” Sori hisses suddenly, not moving an inch, while Ori does as told and hands Mori a narrow loaf of bread from the basket so she can slice that too. “Mori, he's the king, and he knows we're bloody poor! Some honey isn't going to impress him!

“It's not about _impressing_ him,” Mori snaps at her, getting it herself while Ori gets the butter dish so he can spoon some into the bowl that Mori has set out. He finishes his wine as Mori whisks the honey and butter together with a practised hand, then pours it into the serving bowl to add to the tray. “Ori, the cheese, no, not the blind cheese, there, thank you.” She takes the seeing cheese, and slices that too to add to the tray. “There, that's what we have best, I suppose.” Her glare turns on Ori. “You couldn't have given us some warning? I could have gone to the market proper.”

It's such a ridiculous thing to say, but it's true as well. He knows his sister is embarrassed over how little they have to offer, though he doesn't think he would even get much better if he was invited to tea with Fíli's parents. Still, he's made her feel low, and Mori hates little else more than feeling less than. “Sorry,” he says again, but looks towards the shut door, his fingers finding Fíli's name on his left wrist. He's left Fíli alone for quite awhile now, and he wants to go back to him. “Which wine?” 

This time, Sori stands on the table, in her boots no less, Mori looking fit to wring her neck, but then Sori pulls down two dark green bottles, out of the hidden part of the storage. “Won't be impressed by some damn bloody honey, but this should suit His Majesty just fine.”

Sori inspects one of the bottles, her brows raised. “Do I want to ask where you got this?”

“Didn't like it anyway,” Sori says instead of answering, rubbing her nose. “It's a dry one. I don't like the dry ones.”

“So I don't want to know, grand. Ori, grab the cups, the good glass ones, yes, put them on the other tray.” Her scowl has her face all twisted, her piercings furrowing.

“Your face will stick that way,” Sori says to Mori, sneering.

“A law mark on your arm will stick too.” 

Trying not to hear their conversation, Ori pauses with the first cup, the feeling of it unfamiliar in his hand. Though Dori or Mori clean them every single day, without fail, and they lack a speck of dust, he's never actually drank out of one of them. They had been a long-ago gift from Spyros, back when he still did fine work, the blue glass as clear as still water, and as solid as crystal. Their mother had prized the set, had loved the look of them, but they'd never had an occasion that warranted risking using them. 

Ori supposes the king counts as such an occasion. His mother would have thought so.

When the three of them go back in with the tea and wine, there's very little sign of bad tempers, at least for now. Instead, Samin and Thorin are having a rather intense conversation that seemingly has nothing to do with either Fíli or Ori. 

“I hadn't heard the eastern tunnels had weakened to such an extent,” Thorin says to her, sitting with very bad posture on the hearth instead of one of the chairs, his elbows on his knees. “When was the major collapse?”

“Perhaps...two years after the one that took my leg?” Samin is leaning over too, supporting her weight with her whole leg and the arm of the chair. “They just keep rebuilding the supports and sending people down. No real miner will go down these days though, so they can only get those too poor or too young to know better, and then they're not experienced enough to know how to avoid getting hurt down there. That big collapse killed at least two dozen dwarrows, and I'll wager the leg I have left that most weren't even at their majority.”

“That's troubling.” The king leans forward even further, the firelight catching at the silver in his hair. “I had thought the guild would police this.”

Samin scoffs. “As though they give a damn. It's not their children, and it's not work they'd ever take, so there's no money lost for them.” She shakes her head, and tries to shift, but can't seem to find her balance for a moment, and ends up using one hand to move her bad leg. “This is Tintown, Your Majesty, not the Steels.”

“That doesn't make the lives here any less important,” Thorin says intently. “I will call the guild leaders together, and the neighbourhood leaders. This should not be happening, not in Ered Luin.” 

“Poverty happens everywhere, Your Majesty,” Dori interjects, respectfully, but firmly enough he gets Thorin's attention. 

Ori watches his eldest brother meet the king's eyes, watches how Dori refuses to look away. He's never realised before, but Dori looks a little more like their mother than his sire, in some ways. Ori had forgotten the way her jaw would set, the way she would focus on someone, when she was making a point she had no intention of being swayed from. Dori looks enough like her, in the light, that Ori has to look somewhere else. 

He'd forgotten the way her mouth would only pinch on the one side, but he remembers now, and he doesn't want to think about her right now, about how she should be here with them in this room, meeting Fíli and the king. He's already anxious, even with the wine, and he doesn't want to be sad too. 

“Indeed,” Thorin says to Dori. “But I had hoped things were better here.” 

“Things will never be better here, Your Majesty,” Dori dismisses, then sighs deeply. “You are not here to discuss the mines. You are here to discuss Ori.” He turns to Fíli, and Ori swears he can feel Dori's anger from across the room. “You lied to me, and to my family. I don't much appreciate deceit, especially not when it comes to Ori. He is still under mine and Adjoa's charge, you understand that, yes?”

There's a pointed burst of annoyance from Fíli, and Ori glares at him before he starts setting the low table for tea, warning him. Now isn't the time, and besides, Ori doesn't like the idea of Fíli mouthing off to Dori. 

Another set of hands appear in front of him, and Fíli carefully helps Ori set out the cups and the wine. His fingers brush Ori's a few times, intentional, but Ori doesn't respond. His stomach is still all twisted up in knots despite the wine, and more than anything, he wants this to be over. He's spent the past week halfway to tearing his own braids out over this event, and the build-up has made it all so much worse. 

He's irritated with Fíli in the moment, irrationally so. Why couldn't he have been born the son of a tailor or a cook? Why the princess? And why does he have to be the eldest, the heir? What business does the Crown Prince have being matched up to a scribe from Tintown, born to no one of interest?

Perhaps it's not Dwalin that Mahal is having a joke on. Maybe it's their own family. Matching them up to the sort of people they shouldn't ever even see, much less share a life with. 

It's Sori who grabs his hand in hers once the tea has been set, her fingers linking with his so she can press their joined hands against her collarbone. One of her twin braids has slipped over her shoulder, and her smooth hair is cool against his knuckles, the texture as familiar as his own. He can feel her breathing, hear the slight hitch in every fourth or so breath. She'd had the wool cough when she was little, and their family was still living out of tents. Her lungs had never been quite right since, she'd told Ori. 

She rests her chin on their joined hands, and he can see the mark again. Seung, son of Eun. Ori wonders what he was like. He wonders if he would have liked him, if Seung and and Sori would have gotten married, or had children. Was he a noble too? Ori's never asked, even though he knows Sori must know. He's never been brave enough, never wanted to know about someone he should have had the chance to miss. Someone his sister should have had a chance to love. 

“I do not believe tying them together so young is a good idea,” Adjoa is saying to Thorin. “And I cannot believe you do, Your Majesty.”

“What I want is of no matter, in this,” the king replies. “I represent Fíli, and what he wants. What he needs. He is my heir, and will one day lead our people. There cannot be scandal in his life, there cannot be room for misinterpretation in his intentions, especially not towards his mark -”

“And what about what Ori wants?”Adjoa snaps back, far too rudely, but Thorin doesn't seem to mind that part.

Sori meets Ori's eyes, then looks at her own mark. There's a grief in her Ori's always known, not so much for Seung, the one she never knew, but for the connection she never had a chance to even try to have. She's never hidden it, never bothered. She's not unhappy, Ori knows, but he feels the pain in her, the loss, that makes her need to drink at night, that keeps her from a lover, from any connection but the safety of their family.

“ - What I notice is how little you seem to consult your own charge about what he wants -” 

“Ori is _too young_ to know what he wants, and we won't see him promised away before he's had time to consider the situation.”

“I've known since the day Nori left.” The words silence the room like a crack of thunder. “That's why I was so late coming back that night. I found him. And he told me. Fíli never lied to me.” He keeps hold of Sori's hand and turns to face his other siblings, and Thorin and Fíli as well.

“But you lied to us,” Dori points out.

Sori stands. “He told me.” It's not quite the truth, but behind his back, where their hands are still joined, Sori squeezes his fingers. “He told me before his birthday. He didn't want the lot of you involved, and not a one of you has any room to talk about him being sneaky about finding his mark. He wanted to get to know him without anyone breathing down his neck.” She keeps their fingers linked, but pokes at his back. He'll owe her for this. “But he did tell me the whole of it.”

It's not quite the truth and it's not quite a lie. But it's enough of the truth that it passes muster for the time being, though Ori knows Mori is too shrewd by nature to believe anything any of them says at this point. 

Dori and Adjoa look something close to furious, and something like disappointed as well. “You're not his guardian, Sori,” Dori says, cautiously, but the tone doesn't do a thing, because Ori feels his sister's anger without even looking at her.

“Mama did not leave him to just the pair of you,” she snaps, her voice darker than Ori can ever remember hearing it before. 

There's something in the air that makes Ori want Thorin, and even Fíli, gone, something private about their family going on above Ori's head. Whatever it is though, and it is _something_ , it's quickly dismissed by Mori, with a harsh, “Now is not the time for this. We're talking of Ori, and...” Her eyes flick at Fíli, her mouth twisting, “...him.” It's not really an insult, more that Ori doesn't think she knows quite what to call Fíli.

The idea of calling Fíli _Your Highness_ does feel rather ridiculous. But so does his sister addressing Thorin Oakenshield's heir by his given name. 

“The point is,” Mori continues, “that Sori knew. He wasn't being completely deceitful. And Sori is right, in any case. None of us were exactly forthcoming when we met our match. Nori is the only one who can claim that.” She exhales hard, and adds, “And we all know how well that's ended.”

“And we were sneaking around much worse.” Samin winks at Ori when he looks over at her. “And at least the prince here knew not to use his common name when he visited us.” She clucks her tongue at Fíli, getting his attention. “Not as clever as you think you are though. You and me might not share any blood, but we share some cousins, and your name isn't exactly a common one.”

“You knew?” Fíli and Ori both ask, Fíli amused, Ori confused. 

Mori is glaring at Samin, and Ori can already hear the shouting that's going to go on tonight. “You knew?” she echoes. 

“Peace, my heart,” she says to Mori. “I did not know for sure, but I had my suspicions. I didn't want to worry you if there was nothing to worry about.” She sits forward again, her weight on her whole leg, her dark hair loose and falling around her, her eyes on Fíli again. “Suppose there was something to worry about.”

Fíli comes back beside Ori, his hand rising to brush one of Ori's braids back. “There's not,” he assures her, looking at Ori. 

“Easy to say when your view is from the Steels,” Samin says, but lets it lie from there on. “In any case, Ori's always been the quiet sort, but once he's set on something, he's as stubborn as any 'Ri. If he's brought you into this house, then he's set on agreeing to whatever it is your lot have written up.” 

“My sister asked Lord Balin to do the writing,” Thorin says, a draws a folded paper from inside his coat, holding it out to Samin. She takes it, but gives it to Mori. She'd never admit it in front of their present company, but Ori knows she cannot actually read all that well, for all her upbringing was better than the rest of theirs. “The promise is not an engagement. Rather the promise the boys will one day be engaged.” 

“That's not much better,” Mori says, scanning the papers with Dori. “What'll happen if they get older, and they change their minds? Our mother fell out with her match not long after Dori here was born. If they fall out too, what keeps Ori safe from having to be tied to that one for the rest of his life?”

“I wouldn't do that to him,” Fíli protests.

“That's rather easy to say now, when you think you're in love and everything seems bright.” It's Dori who says it, and it bothers Ori, the way Dori so easily dismisses the idea of Ori and Fíli being in love. He doesn't quite know himself whether he's in love or not, but that's for him to decide, not Dori. Not any of them.

He keeps his mouth shut though. 

Fíli doesn't. “Didn't you know you'd love your wife from the moment you saw her?” he asks. 

“It's not the same,” Dori replies. 

It's not a good enough answer for Ori, much less Fíli. “How? Why are we so different?” 

“You're both too young to know much of anything.” Now Dori takes the contract from Mori, and reads it more closely himself, his eyes narrowed. “This says the engagement could be declared anytime after Ori reaches his majority, but it doesn't say who will do the declaring.” He's speaking to Fíli, not Thorin. “I'll not sign this, not unless it the engagement can only be declared when Ori says so. And not unless you can show us you and him together can support a proper home.”

“I will speak to Balin,” Thorin says, though Dori was not addressing him. Ori thinks Dori might be a bit afraid of him too, for all his bluster from before. “He will likely wish to come here himself, or ask you to his offices. He'll want to speak in person, instead of playing a game of messenger.” 

“Then why didn't his lordship join you today?” Mori sounds ready to have an excuse to be upset, but the king's answer doesn't give her the chance. 

“Lord Balin offers his apologies, as the elder brother, for Captain Dwalin's unwelcome intrusion into your home.” It sounds as though Thorin is repeating Lord Balin's apology to the letter, the words stilted somewhat, unnatural. “He wishes to convey his assurance that in the future, no one of his household will enter your home again without your permission.” 

It impresses Ori, and even seems to do something to soften up Dori and Mori at last, the pair of them finally losing some of their barely disguised anger. Ori nearly feels his heart stop though, when Mori says, “I understand you and the Captain are close, Your Majesty?” Everyone knows that, but still Thorin nods, and Mori does too, her hand on the nape of Samin's neck. “I...do not....truly blame him for his actions. I don't think I would have behaved any better in his place.” 

Sometimes still, the way she and Samin look at each other is enough to make Ori's face hot. He looks away now, embarrassed just to be in the room with them, but his eyes land on Fíli's arm, and he just manages to raise them up to Fíli's neck before it's too much to bear any more. He's got a shirt with a low collar under his leather vest today, low enough the tattoos on his collarbone are just peeking out for Ori to see. 

The morning after Ori had spent that illicit night at Fíli's, he had spent far too much time sitting over Fíli, tracing the lines, sketching them, trying to get them exactly right so he wouldn't forget when Fíli was gone. He knew exactly where the one he could see dipped down, knew how it spread across Fíli's chest, knows if he followed it down over Fíli's right side, he'll find the spot where Fíli is ticklish. 

“We need to discuss this,” Dori says to Thorin, “as a family. We must look this over and be sure Ori is being treated fairly, and then we will arrange a meeting with Lord Balin to decide the next step of this.”

Thorin stands, and with hardly a look needed, Fíli has gone for Thorin's coat, a light summer one, blue, with silver embroidery. He holds it for his uncle, Ori watching, then grabs Thorin's sword off the table by the door, handing it to his uncle. As he does it, Ori stands himself and grabs Fíli's own coat, holding it out for him. He knows his family is staring, knows they're not happy, but Fíli's smiling in gratitude, obligingly turning so Ori can help him shrug into it, turning again so Ori can adjust it for him in the front. 

He looks at Ori, his smile soft, private, even in the crowded little sitting room, and covers Ori's hands, still holding the lapels of Fíli's coat, with his own. Ori can feel the two rings he wears, the metal cold but familiar now, can feel Fíli's own warmth, as it wraps around Ori and pulls him close. 

_This_ , Ori knows, even if he's not sure about anything else, this is _real_. 

“Perhaps you should see Fíli out, while we say our good-byes to His Majesty.” Dori does not quite look approving, not just yet, but it's something like it, so Ori leads Fíli out, shutting the front door firmly behind them so it's just them on the step. There are neighbours out, enjoying an evening smoke, the lanterns of the street not yet lit, the summer light still enough to see by in the far-up fissures in the mountain's side. 

Fíli kisses him properly, finally, the first time he has all day. Ori hardly cares that the neighbours see, that the gossip will spread, though he knows he'll care much more later, when it's just him who has to face it all. When Fíli is gone from the mountain, it'll be just Ori, just Ori alone to be stared at and whispered about and he doesn't know if he can stand it, but he supposes he'll have to try.

“It's supposed to be a fine day, tomorrow,” Ori says. “Will you have time in the afternoon, to go down to the river?”

“I'll find it,” Fíli assures him. “I want to spend as much time with you as I can before I leave. Especially if your family is intending on saying no.”

He can hear them behind the door, approaching now, so he kisses Fíli quickly, one more time. “After the mid-afternoon. I'll have finished my chores by then, and I'm supposed to go gather herbs for drying.”

“I'll find you then,” Fíli promises, and steps back right as the door happens, giving Ori the respectable amount of space. He hitches his chin at his uncle, asking, “Are we leaving now?”

“Yes. We have other obligations today, unfortunately.” Ori moves aside without thinking, his head tilting down in a bow without his mind needing to tell it so, as Thorin passes. He almost dips in a curtsy as Adjoa or Nori might, but manages to keep himself upright, though his knees want to buckle. There's something about Thorin, something in him that seems to make him more than anyone else around him, and though Ori's met him twice now, and the shock has worn off a touch, it strikes him again right now. 

When Thorin has stepped past, Fíli leans close again and kisses Ori's temple. “Until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Ori agrees, his hand catching in Fíli's, again without any sort of direction from his mind, and when Fíli presses his mouth to the name inscribed, Ori's not sure he's ever had one rational thought when it comes to Fíli at all. 

He releases Ori and turns to the open door to incline his head respectfully towards Ori's family, before following after his uncle. 

Across the street, one of the neighbours, a Dwarf old enough to be Dori's sire narrows their eyes at Thorin's figure, even as Thorin pulls his hood up. The Dwarf watches Thorin, then shakes his head and goes back to his pipe, allowing Ori to breathe out evenly again. 

His eyes have to adjust once he's inside again, the door shut. The entryway seems too dim, too empty, without Fíli there, though that feels like a very silly thought. 

“The Crown Prince,” Mori says, breaking the silence, and laughs under her breath. “Durin's name, the _Crown Prince_. The heir to Thorin Oakenshield. If Mama could see this...”

“Amad would never allow this for Ori, not at his age,” Dori says, and again, the tension from before freezes the room all but solid, until Sori says, without a single waver in her voice -

“He's not your child.” 

“I know that,” Dori says, but Sori isn't done, apparently. 

“Do you? Do you know that, really? Because in this, it seems you've both forgotten that Ori isn't just yours, and you two aren't the only guardians he has!”

Mori bites her lip and presses forward, her hand closing over Sori's arm, shielding Sori from the room with her own body. “Calm down. They didn't mean anything by it, they're just trying to protect him -”

“By keeping him from his match? What sort of protection is that?” 

“You have no idea what you're speaking of!” Dori raises his voice, and Ori shrinks back immediately, afraid, though why, he doesn't know.

“Because I never had the chance to know!” Sori shouts, trying to fight past Mori. “You've always told me you would have done anything to change things for me, but when it comes to Ori, you're treating him like he's still twenty! He's not a child any more! And his one is alive and _here_ , and _adores_ him, and Ori -!”

“That's exactly the problem!” Dori shouts back, red in the face now, even as Adjoa tries to restrain him. “It's all very romantic, isn't it, to be swept up in the idea of some perfect noble who can save you from everything wrong, who seems so absolutely perfect -!”

“Ori isn't Nori!” Sori is still struggling against Mori, but Mori's hands drop, and Sori stumbles forward, but keeps her balance. Ori hates that some part of him did wonder if she was sober until now. She doesn't usually drink during the day, but sometimes she does, if her work is dull or she starts to think too much. She's kept her balance though, and she isn't crying despite being upset. “Ori isn't Nori,” she says again, and now Ori has to acknowledge she said it. He doesn't want to. 

“No one said that,” Adjoa says. It doesn't feel true, and Ori feels like the drumming in his ears will never silence. He's angry and sick, and it makes him think he might do something entirely reckless if he's given half a chance. 

“You were thinking it loud enough a deaf and dead body could hear it,” Sori replies. 

Ori swallows, tries to make his mouth less dry. It doesn't work, but the anticipation for tomorrow, the river, and the thought of being allowed to be in Fíli's arms under the warmth of the summer sun, it gives him what he needs so he can cross into that reckless feeling without stuttering. “I'm not going to give him up.”

And he means it. He absolutely means it. He doesn't care what they say, what they forbid, he is not giving this up, this one thing that is all his own, the way he's intertwined with Fíli, the way even know, when he knows everything would be so much simpler without Fíli, the way how he feels about Fíli tosses him about and drowns out everything else, he can't. He can't give Fíli up. He has this now, and he can't.

Dori doesn't look at him, doesn't seem to look at anything at all. “I think Nori would have been happier if he'd never met or known Dwalin at all.”

“Yes, because I'm the epitome of joy,” Sori says.

“That's not the point,” Dori says, tired. “None of this is the bloody _point_. The point is that this is too much too soon, and I won't see another sibling so swept up in this idea of a perfect match that they give everything else up for them. We've already lost Nori because he cannot be near Dwalin any more, and I will not have this family broken up any further.”

“Do you even care what I want?” It's not fair, and Ori's chest aches over the idea of how terrible this is, how they're all trying to decide his future without even asking him, or worse, dismissing him. “When I stop wanting what you all want for me, when I want something else, do any of you even care?”

“Oh, my love, of course we care,” Adjoa soothes, coming to him and stroking his hair. 

“I want to be with Fíli,” Ori says, because that might be the truest thing he can say right now. He's angry enough, or maybe just brave enough, all his fears and anxiety have been burned out for just this bright moment, and he knows, he _knows_. “I love him.” 

His law-sister strokes his hair again. “I know.” She doesn't look happy for him at all, not like before, in the bathtub, where her annoyance seemed like a silly act.

“Durin's name, he thinks he's in bloody _love_ with him!” Mori spins around, her fists clenched, until she finds something to hit; in this case, her victim is the wall by the staircase, and she smashes her closed fist against it hard enough it dents. She hits it again, no one doing anything to stop her, then whirls back on Ori. “What are we supposed to do with this, Ori? You've been sneaking about, lying to us, keeping secrets -!” She curses in Khuzdul viciously and hits the wall a third time, less hard this time. “This is exactly how Nori started, do you understand that?”

“It's not the same!”

“We will not lose you too!” Mori shouts. 

Whatever Ori is going to say next, and truly, he's not even sure, never gets said, because Mori grabs him and pulls him close, her embrace tight enough it hurts. Her shoulders are starting to hitch in dry sobs though, so Ori doesn't fight her off. 

She cries against him, no one moving, her braids pressed so hard against his skin they itch, her beads digging in, but Ori holds her back, afraid. Mori never cries, not really. It's not her nature. His sister is solid steel forged, has always been. 

“We've already lost Lori and Mama. We're losing Nori. I can't lose anyone else, Ori. I can't take it.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” Ori says, even as he feels guilt tearing him to shreds over how he had imagined leaving with Fíli in the caravan, leaving his family behind to worry over becoming that much smaller. “I wouldn't do that.” Or rather, he won't now. 

Dori is the one who pries Mori off of Ori, leading her upstairs, his focus on her and off of Ori for the time being. After they hear the door shut, Adjoa clears her throat and says, “Well, I do believe it's time to get supper started properly.” She bustles off to the kitchen without another word, and the sounds of cooking follow, familiar, but somehow wrong right now, too loud.

“So we had the king in our sitting room,” Sori says, whistling. “That was something, then.” 

“It was certainly something,” Samin agrees, most of her weight tilted onto her cane. “Your mother would have been beside herself to see it.” 

Sori sort of shrugs. “Don't know about that. Amad was never much taken with nobles. She was one of the first misplaced though. She lived on the road with them. S'ppose she stopped being all that impressed by them back then.” She narrows her eyes at Samin. “Are you really a cousin to them?” 

“Of a sort, if you use a very loose meaning of 'cousin'. It's only on my bearer's side, in any case, and it's not like her and me speak all that much these days.” 

“Fancy that,” Sori replies. “You'd think you'd be better with a weapon.”

“Missing a leg, thank you. Tends to throw off the balance.” Samin rolls her eyes and shifts her weight to the whole leg. 

Sori has grabbed the still half-full bottle of wine off the table. Despite what she said before, she still takes a deep drink of it, though she makes a face after. “Don't know about that. You weren't very good before you lost the leg.” She huffs, and takes another swig of the bottle before handing it to Samin, who finishes it off. “Look at that, wine's gone.”

“We have more,” Ori points out.

“Nothing to be done except go to the shops,” Samin talks over him, and grabs his arm, linking hers through his. “Let's walk, little love. Get ourselves some air. Maybe check on those dimwits Adjoa is letting run the shop today.” 

There are more neighbours out now, some of the children playing a game involving three sticks and a ball that doesn't seem to have any real rules, while the parents crowd around a pair of old Dwarrows playing soldiers on the pavement, money clearly exchanging hands. They pass Little Zan, sitting out on his front step with his pipe, playing a tune Ori vaguely remembers the words too. It tugs at something familiar in his memories, something he can't place, and it bothers at him even after Little Zan has put the pipe down and he and Sori are talking about some customer and their order for a war hammer. 

Ori and Samin sit on the bottom step, Samin sprawling out, Ori drawing a knee to his chest and keeping the other tucked beneath him. 

“He's rather grand, isn't he?” Samin says, her eyes closed. “Doesn't look much like his uncle, I suppose, with that hair, but there's something very grand about him.”

“Not always,” Ori disagrees. “Often, he's just...who he is. I don't notice it too much any more, not unless I have to. Gotten used to it, I guess.” Above them, Ori hears a bird. He closes his eyes and listens harder, hearing the familiar trill. “A wren,” he says, just to say it. 

“You're not at all like any of us, in most ways, I guess.” The bird trills again, closer. “Suppose it makes sense you were never meant to stay down here with us. Mahal has bigger plans for you, little love.” She sighs, and Ori doesn't hear the bird again. It's probably flown back out through one of the fissures. “I just worry about what those plans are.” 

She leaves it at that, and Ori is glad, because he doesn't want to think about that kind of thing. The life he has now is too much at times, and thinking about there somehow being more, about having to pretend to be brave or be strong or be anything other than who he is right now, in this neighbourhood, a stone's throw from home and supper, proper lessons and someone he thinks he loves, is almost sure he loves, is far, far too much. 

They go to the shops, and Sori buys enough spirits to fill the leather flask she keeps in her shirt. On the way home, her and Samin pass it back and forth, and by the time they get to the door, Samin and Sori are both leaning on Ori a bit more than he likes. Adjoa has made a rabbit stew, with carrots and turnip, and Ori fights over the good brown bread with Sori, until Mori leans over the table and takes it from the both of them, obnoxiously taking a huge bite of it. Her eyes are still a bit red, but no one says anything, and Samin takes the bread from her in any case, lobbing it down the table to Adjoa. Dori laughs at them, indulging in a second glass of wine, and then a third when he realises how far gone Sori and Samin already are. 

“To Ori!” Samin says, raising a glass, laughing. “For somehow outdoing Nori!”

His brother and sisters are truly drunk, and Ori's face burns. He almost wishes they were still as upset as they were before the wine. Almost. Perhaps not.

“To Ori,” Adjoa manages through her wheezing laughter, as Ori starts to collect the food from the table so it can be put away. He thinks he'll be doing the washing up himself, at the rate they're going. 

“To Ori.”

They're the pewter dishes, so it's alright when Ori drops them, though they clang about something fierce on the old stone floor. It hardly matters, none of it matters, as Ori makes it to Nori first, the rest of his siblings hindered by chairs and drink. He throws his arms around Nori, and Nori does the same, the pair of them spinning around in a clumsy circle, before Mori is there, grabbing Nori from behind and lifting him into the air, Sori trapping him from the front. 

Ori thinks to pick the dishes up as his sisters crowd around around Nori, laughing and talking and shouting. Dori is the one who gets there last, and by then, Nori has pulled away from the lot of them, and they're closer to Ori. They're closer to Ori, and Ori is perhaps the only one sober enough to hear how Nori says, “ _Nadad_ ,” see how he falls into Dori's strength so easily. 

“Your _hair_ ,” Dori admonishes. “It'll need to be scrubbed three times over to get that smell out.” 

“Needs to be combed too,” Nori mutters into Dori's shoulder. 

“What it needs is a proper trim, no helping it,” Dori says, firm, with no room for argument.


	12. Chapter 12

“He sounds very grand,” Nori says, his pipe between his teeth while he lights it. “Is he?”

“People say so,” Ori replies, pulling his knees up so he can wrap his arms around them. The roof only has so much room, and while Nori might be content to dangle his legs over the side, Ori is still too frightened of the edge. What little light pierces through the fissures has truly died now, so they're mostly in darkness, only the heavy, dim light of the street lamps to illuminate the street. 

All the little children have gone inside, so it's only the older kids sitting around now, a group a little younger than him playing thrashball in the street. While they watch, two take out the one with the ball, and another from their side swoops in to kick the ball up so they can use their head to knock it over the other team's line. There's a cheer, but the ball comes back into play quick. 

“Did you ever play?” Ori asks, hitching his chin down at them. He certainly never did. 

“Yeah, sometimes. Always had something else to do though, didn't I? Our house has always had more bellies to fill than anyone else's. Was more worried about that than putting a ball over a line.” Nori blows a smoke ring, then offers the pipe to Ori, more out of habit than anything else. 

Ori holds out his hand though, and takes it. 

“What's this, then?” 

“How do I...?” Ori has never smoked a pipe before, and he has no idea what to do. 

“Put it to your mouth, there you go,” Nori directs, while Ori obeys. “Take a short inhale, but hold the smoke in your mouth -” It's too late, and Ori is coughing. Nori laughs, the arse, and pats Ori on the back, not that it helps.

It tastes disgusting, either way, so Ori shoves the pipe back at him, curiosity satisfied. 

Nori takes a few puffs, the quiet between them stretching on, only broken up by the kids down below. It's nice, sitting with his brother again, and Ori's nerves feel something like calm for the first time in a long time. His family is all together again, where they belong. 

“Sori tells me you're sharing his bed already,” Nori finally drawls. 

“You and Dwalin having long chats by the fire then, when he went to you?” He's a little surprised at his own daring, and his face is on fire, but he doesn't like being teased, not about this. “And why do you all have to be in my business?” 

“Because you're the baby.” 

Down below, the kids are being called in by their parents. It's time for evening chores, for most of them. Nori already helped Ori get all the washing up and the rest of it done, their siblings drunk and off to their beds. 

The street is clear and quiet when Nori says, “I gave him a lock of my hair.” 

Ori bites his lip, and asks, “Do you think it would be bad if I gave Fíli a lock of mine?”

Again, there's a long silence. What Nori says at last is so unexpected though, the silence that follows is even longer. “You're so like Lori.” 

When Ori can finally find words again, drawn up past the grief he isn't even sure he has a right to, for the sister he cannot remember, the one Nori does, he barely manages, “Am I?”

“I know you don't remember her much. Doubt you remember Dian at all.” He looks at Ori, a question. “Do you remember him?”

Ori shakes his head. “Sori told me about him though.” 

“He was a funny sort. Kind of mean, even though it wasn't his intention to be. He just never saw the point in lying, to the point he could be damn aggravating in how bloody fucking honest he was with people. Everyone likes to be nice about him now, but no one liked him much when when he was around. The moment he and Lori met though, that was it for them. They were it for one another. A true match. Dori couldn't stand him, and neither could Mama, but Lori never cared. She loved him.” Nori sits up, elbows on knees, and there's a spike of fear in Ori's heart, because Nori is so far over the ledge now. It would be so easy for him to fall to the cobblestones below. “I didn't like him either. He took Lori's attention away from me.”

He's been afraid to ask for specifics, not sure he wants to know, but Ori thinks Nori wants to talk, so he asks, “Sori said he...ended it himself? After she died?” 

“Do you know, I was so convinced when I was a kid that he didn't love her like she loved him. He was so grand, you see, so far above our family. Didn't even seem to like our family much, but I guess he didn't like anyone, not really.”Nori sniffs, and scratches at the side of his nose, a distracted sort of movement. “They weren't married, in any case. So it was us that got told. And I saw Mama have to tell Dian. I was pretty young, you were just a wee thing.” Nori looks at him, and Ori tries to hold his gaze. “Mama told him, and he told her he was sorry, expressed his sympathies. Thought he was a complete arsehole. Couldn't even cry for her.” 

Ori waits for the ending of the story. It comes. 

“He didn't even make it a season. Drank himself numb every day until the morning he hanged himself from a tree.” Nori huffs. “It was about that time I realised I was a damn stupid kid, and I had no business thinking I knew people's hearts better than they did, better than the people they loved, that loved them.” He huffs again. “I don't know what I think about your match, Ori. I'm fairly sure I don't like it, because I don't think it bodes anything good for you. But I'm rather sure you're like Lori, and you don't care what I think, because you love him, and he loves you.”

Maybe it's not the question Nori expects, but it's the one Ori asks; “What did she look like?”

Nori bites his lip. “Darkest skin I've ever seen in my life. Mama praised Lori's skin to Durin and Mahal every day. Dark as the rich soil after the rain. Her eyes were green though, like Mori's. Not as light though. Golden, almost. Like a cat. Her hair grew light too. She was so beautiful, Mama and Dori and Mori all claim she broke at least a thousand hearts before she met Dian.” Now Nori laughs, under his breath. “She used to have scabs on her face all the time though, because she would dig her nails in when she got anxious. Wore her hair short, did anyone tell you? Because she couldn't stand sitting still long enough for braids. It made Mama so angry -”

It's like the sudden sharp cut of sunshine through clouds, the memory, and Ori almost can't breathe.

Because he thinks he's remembering Lori's face, finally. A woman with the most beautiful dark skin, sitting at Dori's feet while her hair gets braided, making a face at Ori, and he can smell her, the sweet scent of lavender and hair oil and he thinks he might hear, he thinks he might remember her voice, just a wisp of a memory

“Did she call me Little Button.?” His chest aches, and the grief he's never known how to handle rushes at him until it hurts. 

Nori pulls him close, and holds him, and Ori knows Nori is crying too. “She called me Little Needle. Dori was just Needle, Mori was Spindle, and Sori was Thread.”

“What did you call her?”

“Shuttle. And Mama was Loom.” Ori can't remember any of that, still isn't really sure he's remembering her face or just making something up. Maybe it's both. Maybe it doesn't even really matter. 

They both settle back on the roof, Nori falling flat on his back before tucking an arm underneath his head. Dori had washed and brushed out his hair, braiding it just for sleep, with the promise of a trim and another wash tomorrow. Even now, Ori can still smell the salt lingering in the two thick braids. “Is your hair lighter?” Ori asks, squinting his eyes. 

“Mm-hmm,” Nori affirms. “Happens when you're on the water a lot, with hair like mine. Yours would probably do the same.” His pipe smoke is almost purple in the light, floating up and up until it dissipates. “You ever thought about leaving Ered Luin?”

Ori bites his lip, thinking before he tells the truth. “Yes. Fíli and his brother are taking a job with a caravan soon. He asked if I wanted to come along. So we wouldn't be apart for two months.” It still makes Ori feel a bit lost inside, knowing Fíli is going to be gone. That he won't have seeing Fíli to look forward to, that Fíli will be in danger every day and Ori won't know anything at all until he gets letters, and even then. Even then. “And he thinks it'll be good for me. He thinks I can learn the bow.”

“That's not your life,” Nori dismisses, and he does it so easily it riles Ori up, angry enough he feels hot inside. “You're going to be a scribe.”

“Doesn't mean I couldn't pull a bow,” Ori argues. 

“It means you will never have to.” 

“What if I want to learn?” 

Nori sits up again, taking an inhale of his pipe, and shaking his head. “You will be a scribe. Being connected to Fíli means you've got Lord Balin himself training you up. You're going to be a scribe. You never have to earn a weapon, you never have to be -”

“I _want_ to learn.” Ori doesn't have much want to kill anyone, but if he could learn a bow, maybe he could learn to hunt, provide for the family. And with Fíli, it would be legal. No fear of being called a poacher, being thrown in the Tower. “I'm allowed to be interested in other stuff, you know.”

Nori looks at him, then looks down at the street. “Yeah. Yeah, alright. I was never great shakes with a bow, but I know the right end of one when I need to. Better with traps. Better with my knives, in a fight.”

Ori thinks about it, then asks, “Why did Dori learn the flail?” He's always wondered, but never asked, since it always seemed like a touchy subject. 

“Hm? Oh. That was his sire's weapon, the flail. The one Dori has was his. Mama and Sakhr...” And Ori perks ups, because that had been the name on his mother's wrist. _Sakhr, son of Nur_. “They didn't hate each other, you know. Mama and him. His family and her family hated each other though, and his family hated that Mama kept Lori around, even after her and Sakhr met. Think he hated that Mama kept letting Lori's sire come around to see Lori. Guess she hated he thought he had the right to tell her what to do. You know how Mama was.” Nori shrugs. “Sometimes love isn't enough, I guess. Or maybe it was because Mama's always loved the lot of us more than anyone else. He spoke against Lori. She wasn't going to have that.”

“Jin never seems to mind us.” They'd gotten a letter a day or so past, from Jin, telling them he'd be in Ered Luin again soon. He'll stay with them, of course, as he always does. Ori is looking forward to seeing him, asking him what he thinks of Fíli. Jin has a quiet wisdom to him that Ori has always liked when he needs something like parental advice. “Him and Sori aren't very alike, are they?” Nori shakes his head, laughing, but Ori adds, “He never seemed to mind that either.” 

Nori hums to himself, a mindless tune, then takes a puff and blows a smoke ring. “Jin is probably the best of our sires. He respected Mama so much. And he's always been good to us, because he loved Mama for a little bit there, and we're Sori's brothers and sisters. His match died when they were kids, he told me. He knew them. They'd grown up together.” 

Ori listens in vague interest, though he's rather sure he already knew all of this. Jin, while not an open sort of Dwarf, is not secretive either. 

“Are you going to allow Dwalin to meet Spyros?” He's not sure Nori has to, since Nori is of age, but it seems odd for Dwalin to not meet him. 

“He's probably arrested him at some point or another,” Nori says offhandedly. “That bloody drunk spends more time in the Tower than me.”That's true, though Spyros is always in for being dead drunk in the streets, nothing too serious. “What about you? Going to introduce the Crown Prince to Cines?”

“I'd have to bloody find Cines first,” Ori says, laughing at the very idea. “And they wouldn't care, in any matter, except that I had to be inconvenient enough to remind them I exist.” 

“Don't know, even Cines might see the point in acknowledging you a bit more if it means they get a connection to the royal family,” Nori says. “Cines is a strange sort, but they're no fool. Well, mostly not a fool.” 

“That's not exactly an encouraging idea. I won't see Fíli used like that.”

Again, Nori hums. “Careful there, little love.”

“About what?”

“He's still a nob, no matter what. Don't matter if he loves you, don't matter if you love him. Things are very different for the pair of you.” It has the sound of a longer lecture, but Ori's had enough of that for the day. 

“I'm not you, Nori,” he says, not very nicely. 

His brother looks at him, eyebrows raised, something offended in his expression, but then he shrugs, and says, “No, I suppose you're not.” He stands up and stretches. “Let's get to our beds, _nadadith_ , before we're both dead on our feet in the morning.” As they climb in the window, Nori says, “Oy, but I can't believe we had Thorin bloody Oakenshield in our sitting room, and I missed it! I miss all the good stuff.” 

“You missed everyone shouting and making a fuss is what you missed,” Ori snaps, not so worried about showing his more petty feelings about the matter with Nori, at least. 

“And it wasn't even me making the trouble! That's not fair, it's not.” The window drops them in the upper hallway, and Nori knocks their heads together, wishing him good dreams, before slipping into his own bedroom. Nori, unmarried and younger than Sori, has the smallest of the bedrooms, little more than a linen cupboard, but he's always seemed to like it more than Ori can understand. In turn, Nori has always said how he cannot understand how Ori can stand sleeping in the narrow, low-ceilinged attic. 

In his nightshirt, lying on top of his quilt, he looks up at the ceiling, the calm greens and blues above him making him think of tomorrow, to join with the safe feeling of all his siblings warm and tucked away in their beds. 

“I bet you Mama gave you a slap when she got to the Halls,” Ori says aloud, wondering if he's being mad, talking to someone who's been gone for longer than Ori ever knew her. “For being so stupid and going out on the river. Guess you'll have a good laugh when Nori gets there, because I know she's got one for him too, he's been being so ridiculous.” He closes his eyes and manages, with some struggling, to get the quilt out from under him and mostly over him. “Nori says I'm like you. I wish I could know I that's true.” 

His room is quiet and still in the dark, the familiar shape of his furniture, what little there is, casting the same shadows they have since he was little. Eventually, he closes his eyes for good for the night.

♦

_Bilbo, son of Bungo_. Thorin's traced the name on his wrist thousands of times over the years, enough he could follow every loop and twist blind. He is doing it now, in fact, he realises.

He looks at it, the familiar unease he's felt since it appeared spiking, as it always does. 

The day it had appeared, Thorin had prayed it was a trick of the light, his own eyes deceiving him. But then Dís had seen, and asked, “Why is it _green_? And written in Common?” Dís has always been the most obnoxious of the three of them. 

Thorin twists his silver ring, the design somewhat clumsier than a king might wear in another time, but Frerin had made it for him, long ago, and Thorin's never quite been able to bring himself to wear another on the finger, not since Azanulbizar. When Frerin had seen the mark, he had frowned, in that way of his, and said nothing, as always. Sometimes, Thorin dearly misses his little brother's silences, such a contrast to Dís, and her constant need to make her opinion known, whether anyone wanted it or not. 

He keeps twisting the ring, looking out at nothing in particular, even when he hears Dwalin approach, and sit beside him. 

“Nori is returned,” Dwalin says.

“Did he give his answer then?” 

Dwalin huffs. “He will sign a contract.”

“Good.” Thorin finally lights his pipe, enjoying the way every inhale slowly unwinds the tension in his chest, until he can breath properly again. “I will have Balin draw up the official pardon. Imagine he or his siblings know an inkist who might cover up the mark?” 

“Likely.” With a pardon, any inkist would gladly change the mark. There would be few who didn't know what it was covering up, but again, with a pardon from the king, and what Thorin hopes to accomplish with Nori in tow, not many will be much bothered by Nori's past. Which does remind Thorin; “Dís is deeply displeased with you, still.”

“And snow is cold, and summers are hot,” Dwalin replies, without much care. “Why is this her business?” 

“She doesn't like Ori.” Thorin isn't sure what to make of that. The lad had seemed perfectly respectable to him, if not a bit prone to shouting. Then again, he is Fíli's match, so Thorin's not terribly surprised. 

“She hates that the boy didn't worship her on sight,” Dwalin scoffs. “What does it matter what Dís thinks? Fíli is of age. He can make his own choices.” Thorin can feel his eyes on Thorin's wrist. “You could find him, you know.” 

“What point is there? I have nothing to offer, nothing to even promise. My life has never been mine, and even my heart has never been mine to give. Our people require my devotion, far more than just one person.” It's a truth Thorin has long accepted, long given in on. “And my match is not of our people. How I could explain it to him?”

Dwalin puffs on his pipe, then asks, “Why the bloody fuck is it green, do you think?”

A ridiculous question, but one Thorin has asked himself many a time. It's unusual, but not unheard of, for a Dwarf to be matched with a Man, which would explain why it's written in Common instead of their own script, but the colouring has never been something Thorin could make pick or axe of. “Perhaps my match is an Ent,” Thorin jokes. 

In any case, he laces his gauntlet back up, hiding it from view again. 

“We will be leaving sooner than you thought, won't we?” Dwalin asks, after a time. 

“There's no more time left to waste,” Thorin confirms, though he wishes it weren't the way of things. “The Men around us will not wait another few years. And we do not have the resources to take a full regiment from Ered Luin. If we should fall, Ered Luin must be kept safe. No, it will be a small party, as we planned, and hopefully Dáin can spare us more bodies.” If things were better, if things were easier, Thorin could take a full platoon, but he cannot risk soldiers leaving Ered Luin now. It will have to be a small party, small enough to keep fed and unnoticed, and with those skilled enough to survive. 

“Nori has a friendship with a well-known bounty hunter and poacher, a veteran of Azanulbizar. Called Bifur. Nori says he will speak to him. Bifur has three bracelets already, and too many enemies here. He would be a worthy addition. And Óin has convinced Glóin to join. Might not be much use in combat, but he has wealth to spare, and better, influence and friends outside of this mountain. He can get us good ponies, and safe passage where we might not be all that welcome otherwise.” 

“That puts us at nine. I would like a half-dozen more, perhaps.” They will not be in good land, and the party must stay small. Thorin knows it would be easier if he could be open about this with his people, if he could tell them the truth of things, but he won't have upset. All must appear well, or at least well enough. “Hunters, if we can find them. This Bifur...he must know of some. And so must Nori.” 

“We spoke of it, before he went home to his family.” Dwalin shakes his head. “He told me he was not ready to return, and yet he did. And he came to me before he went to his family.”

“He lied to you for the better part of your lives.”

“We both still have a good bit of our lives left.” 

A very selfish part of Thorin wonders at _Bilbo, son of Bungo_ , yet again. His thoughts always seem to turn back towards him, whoever he is. He wonders if Bilbo would even care Thorin would come to him empty-handed, or if he has been waiting hopelessly as well. Indeed, there are not many outside of their people who can read their script, and perhaps Bilbo does not even know Thorin's name. 

Perhaps he asked some travelling smith, Thorin thinks, amused at the turn his thoughts take. None of theirs would ever reveal secrets of their people, but in his mind, the imaginary smith perhaps panics to see _Thorin, son of Thráin_ written on an outsider. Perhaps they lie. But he likes to think one of his people would see his name on an outsider, and take care with them.

He's had less idealistic scenarios in his head though. There are too many who blame his grandfather for their people living in diaspora, and so there's a part of his heart that eases every time he feels, vaguely, like a shadow in the corner of his eye, a small touch of a happiness not his own, a mourning different from his. The briefest touch of a heart not his own, and it reassures him that whoever and wherever his match is, he is alive and well. 

To long for someone he's never even seen is strange to him still, even after all these years, and yet he does. 

Dwalin has been silent for the longest time, but now he says, “I wanted him, the first time I saw him. Never wanted another like that. Didn't understand it. First time I touched him though...” Dwalin grits out, “I was ashamed of myself. Thought I was betraying my match.”

“He betrayed you, first.” Thorin understands though, try as he might to not. He understands why Nori, son of Spyros, looked at Dwalin, and decided to lie. He understands. It's perhaps the same reason he has remained alone all these years. Protecting the other half of yourself from everything you are, because everything you are will just bring them pain. “He's a poacher, a thief, and he knows the river now. Funny.”

“Why's it funny?”

Thorin smirks. “You're an ugly brute, and Mahal matched you to a clever, pretty Dwarf.”

“Oy!” Dwalin punches him in the arm. 

“Fuck your sire,” Thorin returns, punching him back. 

“Fuck yours,” Dwalin punches him again. 

“So much theoretical fucking.” And Vimli strolls out of the door, the light from the streets making his hair almost as golden as Fíli's. “For nobles, you two are the most ill-mannered clouts.” 

“Well, you're the most well-mannered circus freak I've ever met, so we're even.” Dwalin is making a very stern face at Vimli, though Vimli does not return it. “So tell us, what do you think of all of this?” He makes an unkind face. “Without your overbearing spoiled brat of a wife to influence your voice.”

“I find it very amusing how you refer to me as a circus freak and insult my wife,” Vimli says, politely, and just like that, there is the flash of a knife, and a lock of Dwalin's hair is embedded in the stone by a stiletto blade. “While expecting me to agree with you.”

It takes only a moment, and then Dwalin is roaring with laughter, Thorin smiling. Vimli does not smile, but he doesn't seem particularly upset either. He sits with them instead, packing his short-stemmed pipe with the sweet smelling mix he prefers, and lighting it.

“In any matter, Dís is sorry for what she said,” Vimli says. “She does not say so, f course, but she has stopped shouting and carrying on. And we both thank you for going to the 'Ri family household in our place.” He puffs. “Well, I suppose it's your place, really.” 

“I would never go directly against you and Dís' wishes unless I felt you were acting against what Fíli truly wanted,” Thorin says gently. “He is set on this. Perhaps it is foolish, at their ages, but you know there's no changing his mind now that it is set.” 

Vimli shakes his head. “Perhaps this job is for the best. Give them some time apart to think clearly again.” 

“Doubtful,” Dwalin argues. “When you take into account who bore him.” Dwalin likely means it as both an insult and a tease, but Thorin cannot blame him. He himself had hardly known what to say when his sister marched up to him all those years back, and very decisively told him she was not only bearing, but she was going to fetch Vimli and bring back a husband. He had consented to her leave, but only because he had been too pole-axed to argue. 

Dís had then done as she said she would, taking only two of her own friends with her for her guard, and indeed tracked Vimli and his caravan down to Bree. The way she told the story, it had been very romantic. The way her friends, Esi and Sarnai, told it, Dís had bullied her way through the tents and carts until she found Vimli, and told him either he came back to Ered Luin with her to raise their child, or she'd be taking his braids back with her. 

“My sons could not be easy,” Vimli says mildly, “and be sensible like my line. No, they had to get the Durin temperament.” He exhales with some weight to it, then says, so easily, because he means no harm, and he has never known what lies beneath Thorin's gauntlet, “At least Fíli has a good Dwarf name as his match.”

He means no harm, and truly, Thorin hates the Elves more deeply than Vimli ever will, but he has better reason than Vimli's nomadic line, and there's a bone-deep ache in him at the words. So he says, “Narvi was the greatest of us, and Narvi had an Elf's name.”

“So they say,” Vimli dismisses far too easily. “In any case, if we're lucky, no one will ever know. And if you plan on dragging my youngest on this foolhardy quest of yours, perhaps it will never matter.” 

There's little point in arguing, but Thorin does not care to hear any more in the vein either. He rises, intending to take his leave. “Good night, Dwalin, Vimli. It's time I am for my bed.” 

Their good-byes follow him down the stairs from the balcony where he and Dwalin usually meet to smoke, little more than a railed outcropping between some of the houses, and he acknowledges them with a hand held up. It _is_ time he went to bed, and allowed all that had passed through the day to rest. He did not expect his mind to find any respite on this night, because it rarely did. 

On this night though, as he slept, in a place between true dreaming and waking, he imagined himself lying on his back in the grass, the open night sky above him, the stars bright, and the scent of strong pipeweed in the air. He almost thought he heard a song being hummed beside him, but he could not make out the words, nor turn his head to see the one humming. Still, there was peace in his thoughts, for a time at least.

♦

The summer sun was bright, almost too hot, and that, combined with the low hum of the insects around them, has Fíli feeling half-asleep with his head in Ori's lap. Ori is running his fingers through Fíli's hair, reciting the history of Erebor's kings and queens. Occasionally, Fíli has to correct him on some detail, something Fíli has more cause to know than Ori ever should have.

“Queen Dipali, wife to King Thorin the First, who came from the Kingdom of the Mother Mountain -”

“No,” Fíli contradicts. 

“No?”

“The Kingdom of the Mother Mountain only became a unified kingdom around when King Náin was ruling Erebor. When she came, she came from the...damn, I cannot remember it in the proper language, but it translates to the Land of Blue Pillars. Apparently, it was some sort...” Fíli stumbles. “Something to do with wizards, blue ones. Our people there paint the pillars of their homes blue. In any case, that's where she was from properly.”

“I've never heard that,” Ori says, with interest. “Do you know any stories about her?”

He asks so eagerly, and it sparks Fíli a bit from his lethargy. “Well...no. Not really.” 

He feels terribly dull to say it. Ori is so interested in everything like this, and Fíli feels where he lacks in the conversation. He knows he's not stupid, but Ori is so curious about everything and anything. 

“The Land of the Blue Pillars,” Ori says, fascinated, not disappointed at all it seems, his fingers still dragging over Fíli's scalp. “Blue wizards? I know of white and of grey and I once heard there's a brown one, but it was one of Nori's friends who told me, so I'm not sure he wasn't having me on. Blue wizards? Can you imagine meeting a wizard, much less two?” 

Fíli shakes his head, smiling to himself because Ori is so very....so very himself. Fíli doesn't know how to describe Ori, sometimes, except that he is so perfect and yet too much all at once. Against his ear, he can hear Ori's stomach rumbling. “I can imagine you'd like some lunch.”

“Very funny,” Ori chides, pulling back so Fíli knows to sit up. 

In the bright summer sun, Ori's hair is reddened, his dark eyes bright, and Fíli wishes in his heart he could carry this image with him always. “I brought rabbit,” he says, instead of something terribly soppy. “And cider.” He saw Ori had a basket as well when he came up out of the trees, and he can smell bread, fresh-baked. 

“Samin made rye bread today, and she set some aside for me,” Ori says, unfolding the clean cloth inside the basket to show four of them, along with a lot of blackberries. “I picked these before I came to see you. They won't last long. The birds usually get the lot of them before I even get a chance.” He pops one in his mouth, and only seems surprised for a moment when Fíli takes the chance to kiss him after. He tastes warm, and sweet, the juice lingering in his mouth. 

“I'll write you, when I'm gone,” Fíli promises. “My uncle takes a raven whenever we travel, one of his own, so he can talk to Balin and my mother. I'll send letters for you as well.” 

“He won't mind?” 

Fíli shrugs. In truth, he doesn't much care if Thorin minds. He doubts he would, in any case. “It won't be any trouble. He'd mind that more than anything.” The rabbit is fresh-cooked, not dried, and it tears apart easily. He passes a piece to Ori, and steals a roll from the basket as well. 

Around them, there's birds singing, and Fíli takes a swig of the cider, looking out on trees and the patches of meadow he can see, sunlight punching through in bright patches, everything green and growing. It's deceptive, he thinks, his thoughts taking a dark turn, that everything should look so alive, when inside, their people are on the brink of dying. 

Erebor is their only chance, he knows. The only chance they have to survive, to rebuild.  
“Do you know,” Fíli says, settling back in Ori's lap, “anything about tapestry-story?”

“Yes,” he replies, feeding Fíli a blackberry absent-mindedly, then eating one himself. “That was my mother's art. She used to practice still, with needlepoint. Little pieces, made with scrap. Nori learned it from her. She wanted to make sure the craft stayed alive in our family. None of the rest of us had much patience for it. Dori can knit, and Mori is a seamstress, but Nori...Nori has a feel for the story in the thread.” 

Tapestry-story is a fabled art, a rare talent. Fíli hates that a very realistic part of himself puts that in an imaginary column of Nori's assets, if the time ever comes he needs to be talked up to their people. “Do you think any of the tapestries in Erebor are still intact?” This was his original point, and while sad, is an entirely different conversation than the one about Nori.

“The ones kept in the vaults are likely still intact, as long as the vaults remain sealed tight. The ones hanging though, mould has gotten them, if the fire didn't. They're likely all mostly rotted away. Maybe the ones in the inner areas.” He gives Fíli another blackberry, this one so ripe it's as sweet as sugar in his mouth. Fíli bites at Ori's fingers, and gets a smack against his shoulder for it. “All the scrolls in the Great Library are gone. I wish they weren't, but I know they are.” 

“What do you mean? My mother and my uncle told me the Great Library could be sealed, in an emergency.” The Great Library had been designed in a rather genius sort of way, though the plans had been more in mind of a siege or a fire in the mines, rather than a dragon. The entire place could be sealed up, supposedly, and save their histories, their stories, their culture. 

Ori shakes his head though. “It would have had to have been sealed from the inside. And it would have taken a dozen to do it. Everyone was trying to escape.” He sighs, the movement of his stomach and chest against Fíli's ear. “All we have to hope for is the vaults. And even then, so much is lost. Our people...we've lost so much. So many stories, so many poems, so much history.”

“Would you have stayed?” It's a question Fíli's not sure about, but he asks anyway. “Would you have stayed to save the Library?”

“Well...well, yes, but...that's because...everything that is our people, it's so much bigger than me, bigger than you, even, and to lose it, to lose so much, it would be unbearable -” He's so earnest, so above Fíli in his selflessness, and he dares to say he's worth less than Fíli.

Fíli sits up, hooks a finger under Ori's chin, and kisses him. “I love you,” he says, because it needs to be said before he leaves. It needs to be said, so Ori always knows. “And I wish you were coming with me.”

“I do too,” Ori confesses. “And I will one day, but with Nori just now back, and my age...” 

“I know.” He leans forward, dragging his nose over Ori's cheek until they're resting together comfortably, Fíli's mouth by Ori's ear. “One day, I'll take you to see all those places you draw. Show you the sea, the plains of Rohan...everywhere you want to see.”

“I know it's probably gone,” Ori says quietly, his breath hot against Fíli's skin. “But I'd like to see the Library of Erebor one day. I know it's impossible, but I'd at least like to think I might, one day. Even if it is gone..I'd like to see what's left.” 

“Yeah?” He kisses Ori again.

“Yes,” Ori confirms. 

Fíli decides something in this moment. “That's going to be my wedding present to you. The Library of Erebor.”

Ori laughs. “Don't be stupid.” He looks at Fíli, obviously expecting a joke, but Fíli's serious. He's going to give Ori that library, even if it's just ash and crumbling stone. He will give Ori what he so dearly longs for. “Fíli, you cannot give me the Library.”

“Not today, but we're not getting married today,” Fíli argues. “But when we can, I will have the Library to gift you.” Before Ori can ask, Fíli pulls him close. “Wouldn't you like that?”

He doesn't look like he really believes Fíli, likely thinks Fíli is playing a game with him, but he smiles and lets himself be held close. It's too hot to sit like that for long, and eventually Fíli has to let go. 

“What am I supposed to give you, if you give me a Library?”

Fíli shrugs. “We'll think of something.”

“Well, until then...” He sounds so nervous, Fíli's a little concerned, but Ori pulls something wrapped in plain fabric out from his pocket. “It's...it's considered a charm, in my family, you know....we don't really cut our hair, well we do, of course we do, but...um.”

Inside the folded cloth, there's a lock of Ori's hair, braided with a purple ribbon, tied in a lantern-knot. A wish for safe travels, and a promise besides. Fíli can hardly believe it, cannot think of anything to say, and Ori, for his part, seems determined to stare at the ground and only the ground.

It's alright. Fíli doesn't need words to kiss him. Eventually, he does manage, "I will come back to you. Always. I promise."

Ori sniffs, and nods, pulling Fíli in for another kiss. "You had better."


End file.
